Yes, I Could Have Done Otherwise

[chewybrian]

Oops--I see you already said you grew up in a strongly Catholic culture. Still wondering if you're older than I am, though.

Regarding religion, I was brought up rather unusually in that I had more or less no notion of any religious ideas until I was around 15 or 16. And then when I finally learned something about religions, I was like--"Wait, you believe what??" I thought it was some sort of practical joke at first.

I'm actually a couple years younger. However, Mark Twain allegedly said that if the world was about to end, he would want to be in Cincinnati, as everything happens twenty years later there.

The religious scene is one more good example of what I was getting at above. In my head, I didn't buy what was being sold, but especially not the things that went against the very words of Jesus that were supposed to be the backbone of the whole thing. For example, my Mom was shunned from the church because she was divorced, though I was still expected to go to CCD classes, as I might possibly have been saved. But, Jesus hung out with thieves and hookers and said they could all be saved, so there was a serious inconsistency that was evident to me at a very young age. Yet, I was not actively speaking out against the church, as I thought I would be an outcast if I did. Again, the outside world did not shape my essence, but only repressed it, or encouraged me to repress it. My deeply held ideas of right and wrong were still my own.

[Marvin_Edwards]

As you already know, the concept of choice can only function, with the agency of the choice being a matter of chosen opinion.

There must be freedom in identifying the agency of a choice, in order to preserve the freedom in the concept of choice. As is obvious.

Your argumentation makes no sense because you seek to make everything cause and effect, while proposing a mechanism which is not cause and effect. While your mechanism of choosing appears consistent with what cause and effect does, the mechanism itself is not cause and effect. So then really, you throw out cause and effect just the same, as when you would propose a mechanism of choosing which was not similar to what cause and effect does.

One only needs to combine cause and effect, with possibility and decision, and not make possibility and decision into something similar as cause and effect. A universe where both cause and effect, and possibility and decision, are real.

And the obvious solution would be that a cause and effect belong together as one thing chosen.

I choose to fire the gun, the cause is the gun firing, the effect is someone get's shot.

The agency of this choice, be it hate, joy, love, whatever, is categorically a matter of chosen opinion what it is.

1. Freedom, to be meaningful, must reference some meaningful constraint. A bird is set free (from its cage). We enjoy freedom of speech (free of political censorship). I made this choice of my own free will (free of coercion and undue influence). Universal causal necessity/inevitability is not a meaningful constraint, because it is exactly identical to us just being us, doing what we do, and choosing what we choose.

2. The question, "what caused this?", is what makes everything a matter of cause and effect. Even if we never discover the cause of an event, we are drawn to the belief that there is a cause, because knowledge of the cause of an event gives us some control over the event. For example, knowing that a virus causes polio, and knowing that the body's immune system can be primed to fight that virus by vaccination, has given us control over that disease.

3. But the notion of "cause and effect" is not a cause. It is simply a way to organize events in a natural sequence. We push the cue stick into the cue ball, causing it to hit the 8 ball at an angle that causes the 8 ball to roll into the corner pocket. Cause and effect did not do that. We did. The notion of causation simply links the events. Only actual objects and forces can cause events. I was an object that applied force to the cue stick, which is the object that hit the cue ball, which is the object that hit the 8 ball, which it the object that rolled into the final object, the corner pocket.

4. Reasoning is a causal mechanism that allows the person to choose what they will do. Reasoning is not physical or biological causation, but rather it is rational causation. This is where free will appears.

[Syamsu]

It's just aberrant reasoning, trying to avoid the obvious truth of creationism. Only the subjective and spiritual has the power to choose, by logic.

Reasoning mainly consists of facts and opinions. Opinions in reference to the agency of a choice, the spiritual, and facts in reference to chosen things, material.

There is freedom throughout the universe, meaning objects have several alternative futures available which way they can turn out, and any of them is made the present. Only that way makes sense from an information perspective, that new information is generated on the go. Not all information is unpacked, it is also new, by choice.

A cue ball is not an actual object? You are an actual object? Twisting things, to avoid the obvious truth.

[Papus79]

It's just aberrant reasoning, trying to avoid the obvious truth of creationism. Only the subjective and spiritual has the power to choose, by logic.

Why would creationism have any impact though? Even if we're not in a 4-D block universe where past, present and future are already written in the literal sense we're still in a place with 4 coordinates where we don't double-back over them. I think the only thing that might have a more complex relationship with time is scanning that our deeper faculties do (one could call that subconscious processes) but that doesn't actually eliminate determinism rather it just augments the pool of information at least instinctually available to you at any given moment.

[Papus79]

It's just aberrant reasoning, trying to avoid the obvious truth of creationism. Only the subjective and spiritual has the power to choose, by logic.

Why would creationism have any impact though? Even if we're not in a 4-D block universe where past, present and future are already written in the literal sense we're still in a place with 4 coordinates where we don't double-back over them.

One minor tweak - we could theoretically double back over spatial coordinates, although that's tricky with the expansion of the universe and spiraling of our solar system in a given direction. Time is the one coordinate we can't make any backward or return motion on and this, in my mind at least, locks in the causal coordinates both within and outside of ourselves to what we end up doing (no matter how subtle or complex those dynamics are).

[Steve3007]

Why would creationism have any impact though?

Note: When Syamsu uses the word "creationism" he doesn't use it in the same sense that many people use the word "Creationism". He has a long history, going back many many years, of coming here to say exactly the same thing over and over again about choosing.

[Papus79]

Note: When Syamsu uses the word "creationism" he doesn't use it in the same sense that many people use the word "Creationism". He has a long history, going back many many years, of coming here to say exactly the same thing over and over again about choosing.

Ah, so it's probably something much more anodyne with a good attention hook. TY.

[Syamsu]

Creationist conceptual scheme:
1. Creator / chooses / spiritual / identity of which is a matter of chosen opinion
2. Creation / chosen / material / existence of which is a matter fact forced by evidence

It's standard generic creationism, without the specifics of who created what, when, filed in. It shows creationism validates the concepts of subjective opinion, like beauty, and objective fact, like the size of the earth, in separate categories, each in their own right. All the rest of philosophies only validate the concept of fact, not opinion.

Your ideas, Papus79, are obviously ideosyncratic selfserving nonsense. Creationism is the straightforward way.

[Syamsu]

Why would creationism have any impact though?

Note: When Syamsu uses the word "creationism" he doesn't use it in the same sense that many people use the word "Creationism". He has a long history, going back many many years, of coming here to say exactly the same thing over and over again about choosing.

I use the word creationism in a generic sense, descrining the underlying structure of a creation theory. Without filling in the specifics of who created what when.

[popeye1945]

We are reactionary creatures as something larger than ourselves, thus there is no human action. There is but reaction. Do we have the ability to choose our reactions, it is Not really possible to know, but unlikely. The complexity of the possiblities is beyond our limited capacity know. One thing is certain, one cannot, NOT react, for even a decided inaction is a reaction to one's environment. Even breathing is not an action proper, it is but a reaction to lack, to a need, reaction is our partisapation within that larger whole. I could have done otherwise, is a nonsense statement, but you did react, in NOT doing otherwise. The next time you are puzzled by someone's behaviour/s ask your self, what is he/she reacting to. To think they are DOING, and they are unmodivated to do so, is just silly. Could I have done otherwise, what might you be reacting to, to do so? Then you must look out at the spectrum of the cosmos for your answer.

[LuckyR]

The problem with thinking about the issue of decision making (as opposed to observing decision making), is the error of assuming that real decisions are arrived at through either pure, reproducible logic or that the physical characteristics of molecules and electrical charges within the brain are reproducible.

[popeye1945]

LuckyR,
That is to say that decisions are emergent qualities but, the source drawn upon is close to infinite.

[Hans-Werner Hammen]

As an Epiphenomenalist I assert that so called "properties" do not exist - they are no-thing made up FROM/ABOUT some-thing and they are merely mat(r)erial-ized via an assertion OF the property.

I assert that, for two examples, the property called "freewilledness" and the property called "determinedness" of some-thing / of somebody do not exist.
All that DOES exist on this occasion, is the assertion OF freewilledness and-, or versus-, the assertion OF determinedness.

Now, the thing is, there might, on some occasions, the assertion of freewilledness be- (DEEMED to be that is!) quite useful = true, while on some other occasion the assertion of determinedness is (ie is DEEMED to be!) useful = true.

This assertion is (DEEMED by me!) to resolve the assertion of a non-reconciliable dichotomy

I assert that by FAR more often than not, the symbol "truth" simply symbolizes "usefulness"

Truth and usefulness as such, they are imaginary. We all know well the assertion "truth is in the eye of the beholder" which symbolizes to me "is individually fabricated, is neither provable nor refutable, is a property = the imaginary, can only be asserted"
Kind regards from GERMANY!

[LuckyR]

As an Epiphenomenalist I assert that so called "properties" do not exist - they are no-thing made up FROM/ABOUT some-thing and they are merely mat(r)erial-ized via an assertion OF the property.

I assert that, for two examples, the property called "freewilledness" and the property called "determinedness" of some-thing / of somebody do not exist.
All that DOES exist on this occasion, is the assertion OF freewilledness and-, or versus-, the assertion OF determinedness.

Now, the thing is, there might, on some occasions, the assertion of freewilledness be- (DEEMED to be that is!) quite useful = true, while on some other occasion the assertion of determinedness is (ie is DEEMED to be!) useful = true.

This assertion is (DEEMED by me!) to resolve the assertion of a non-reconciliable dichotomy

I assert that by FAR more often than not, the symbol "truth" simply symbolizes "usefulness"

Truth and usefulness as such, they are imaginary. We all know well the assertion "truth is in the eye of the beholder" which symbolizes to me "is individually fabricated, is neither provable nor refutable, is a property = the imaginary, can only be asserted"
Kind regards from GERMANY!

If you want to substitute "useful" for "truth", I don't have a problem with that. But it has no useful difference in day to day life.

[Hans-Werner Hammen]

If you want to substitute "useful" for "truth", I don't have a problem with that. But it has no useful difference in day to day life.

I could but forgive me I cannot...

Substantiv: True-NESS = truth = useful-NESS
Particip: true = useful

An assertion OF truth = OF trueness is deemed to be true or not, useful or not

Substantiv: Truth = Wahr-GENOMMEN-heit = observed-ness = Wahr-heit = true-ness
Partizip: True = wahr