Philosophy for beginners?

[Jonti]

I can't be bothered with you phil.

 

[Jonti]

I can't be bothered with putting up with you, I mean.

 

[Jonti]

You can look at history, evolution or whatever but they aren't going to tell you how you should relate to the world, that is the fundamental truth of existentialism. This is why existentialism is still relevant to a world where people seek ultimate meanings and direction in all sorts of shit, from God, to new age paganism, gaia or in more materialist ways in the likes of evolutionary psychology. If existentialism leads to despair then so be it, afterall what sort of cretin would hold banal happiness as purpose of life especially in a world where it more oftne than not requires idiocy if not outright lying to yourself.

Amazing that you describe ethics as a wooly appendage to philosophy yet think speculative crap about determinism and time contraction isn't.

Relativity : the Special and General Theory is hardly speculative crap.

It's well worth a read; the elegance of Einstein's philosophical understanding is so profound that his ideas unfold almost like a rationalist, a priori metaphysic.

If science is a part of philosophy, then for sure this little book is an essential philosophical work

 

[Jonti]

Yes, it does. But it is more than that. 'this was caused by my act that was initiated by me', and the me most of us mistakenly mean is the conscious me, which only becomes aware of the decision after it has happened. We simply do not realise that consciousness is after the fact. At least, we haven't until very very recently.

I think this needs to be interpreted very carefully indeed ... to say "consciousness is after the fact" could give a very misleading impression. It could very easily be taken to imply that consciousness is somehow irrelevantly dangling on the end of a chain of physical causation.

When I hold out my arm to request a bus to stop, the decision to do that was likely made way back in the past. I can automatically and unthinkingly signal the right bus to stop at the right time because the action was already decided and primed. Having decided the sort of thing one wants to do, when the time comes, one physically prepares to act before one is aware of deciding to flag down the bus.

 

[articul8]

Having decided the sort of thing one wants to do, when the time comes, one physically prepares to act before one is aware of deciding to flag down the bus.

The whole language-game of "decision making" is inappropriate here - what you presumably mean by "decision" is in fact the pre-cognitive availability of a shared cultural frame of reference. But there's no meaningful sense that that's an idividual "decision" - as though when the bus was coming you could just as well have stopped it by flashing your arse at the driver

 

[revol68]

Relativity : the Special and General Theory is hardly speculative crap.

It's well worth a read; the elegance of Einstein's philosophical understanding is so profound that his ideas unfold almost like a rationalist, a priori metaphysic.

If science is a part of philosophy, then for sure this little book is an essential philosophical work

Yes, because I was saying Relativity is speculative crap.

No I was saying that applying it to the argument over free will or determinism is speculative crap.

But hey nice attempt at a strawman.

 

[Jonti]

That would probably stop a great deal of traffic, not just the bus

Would a sufficiently knowledgable neurologist detect what I had decided to do, even before my conscious awareness of making that choice? And if that did turn out to be the case, would that tell us anything?

I'm saying it would not ...

... the [neuronal] causes and correlates of conscious experience should not be confused with their ontology [...] the only evidence about what conscious experiences are like comes from first-person sources, which consistently suggest consciousness to be something other than or additional to neuronal activity.

source

 

[Jonti]

Yes, because I was saying Relativity is speculative crap.

No I was saying that applying it to the argument over free will or determinism is speculative crap.

But hey nice attempt at a strawman.

Point is that if you accept Relativity as a physical theory, you also get determinism.

No-one has yet interpreted the theory in a way that avoids that conclusion.

 

[revol68]

Point is that if you accept Relativity as a physical theory, you also get determinism.

No-one has yet interpreted the theory in a way that avoids that conclusion.

So much like Newtonian mechanics then?



As I said the whole issue is futile, as it appears our free will is determined and is a working assumption in our every day life. It doesn't make an once of difference if free will is a kind of illusional by product of determinism, because this experience of the illusion is still what we are referring to when we talk of free will.

It also doesn't in anyway side step the issues raised by various existentialist philsophers.

 

[Jonti]

Yes, very much like it. They are both part of what we call "classical physics".

When you say "free will is determined", what do you mean?

 

[revol68]

Yes, very much like it. They are both part of what we call "classical physics".

When you say "free will is determined", what do you mean?

So infact relatively isn't particularly relevant to the free will or determinism debate, as it's simply more a matter of cause and effect.

by free will being determined i mean that if free will is an illusion, it is of course one that is ultimately determined, going on the small matter of it being a working assumption of how we navigate the world.

If human action is predetermined then so is this argument, and the fact we are arguing would imply that we think we can change the other persons mind or have some sort of impact on the world, therefore even in your argument for determinism you are working under an assumption of free will.

 

[Jonti]

Well, the determinism of newtonian mechanics is a simple matter of cause and effect, yes.

But no, the determinism of relativity flows more from Einstein's way of thinking about the nature of space-time itself.

I'm not arguing for determinism by the way, or that freewill is an illusion.

 

[revol68]

Well, the determinism of newtoniam mechanics is a simple matter of cause and effect, yes.

But no, the determinism of relativity flows more from Einstein's way of thinking about the nature of space-time itself.

I'm not arguing for determinism by the way, or that freewill is an illusion.

I wasn't suggesting Relativity was simple cause and effect, I was suggesting that what is relevant to the debate over determinism is mechanical 'cause and effect' and so claims that Relativity is particularly relevant to the argument are just bullshit. Infact the reason someone would raise it in terms of Relativity and not Newtonian mechanics of "cause and effect" would be to muddy the waters to try and intimidate a non physicist into conceding the discussion.

 

[Jonti]

Then let me reassure you that Mr Einstein took great care to make sure his ideas are accessible to the intelligent general reader.

In this famous short book Einstein explains clearly, using the minimum amount of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory which has shaped the world we live in today. Unsurpassed by any subsequent books on relativity, this remains the most popular and useful exposition of Einstein's immense contribution to human knowledge.

Again, the determinism of relativity flows from Einstein's way of thinking about the nature of space-time itself.

 

[revol68]

Then let me reassure that Mr Einstein took great care to make sure his ideas are accessible to the intelligent general reader.

How is that relevant? Einstein could have written his theory for publication by Ladybird and it still wouldn't change the fact that someone throwing up Relativity in a discussion of free will/determinism (let alone one about existentialism) is either just stupid or is seeking to muddy the waters in a bid to intimidate those who haven't got a firm understanding of it.

In short it's a cunts trick.

 

[revol68]

Again, the determinism of relativity flows from Einstein's way of thinking about the nature of space-time itself.

Does it have any greater impact on the issue of determinism and free will than simple mechanical cause and effect?

I would have thought no.

 

[Jonti]

And I am suitably impressed with your insight, of that you can be sure.

 

[Jonti]

That was a little mean -- it seems you feel insulted that the issue was even raised at all, and what you say is strongly influenced by the perception that it was some sort of trick, some attempt at intimidation, by lbj.

It is tricky to use the results of science to help philosophical understanding. But if one takes the view that the sciences are part of natural philosophy (and we both do) then it's certainly OK to make the attempt. The way I read the conversation, that was all that was going on, and no trickery or intimidation or anything like that was intended.

Anyway, it is very widely understood, and even more widely accepted, that Relativity envisages a world in which the future has in some sense already happened. We just turn the pages of the book of creation, but the book is already written. The idea of "simple mechanical cause and effect" doesn't necessarily lead to that picture of space-time. That is an important difference.

On the other hand, any kind of determinism, it seems to me, cannot help but insist that we cannot engage with the conditions of our existence, and effect objective improvements to our state. That's an important similarity for sure.

 

[phildwyer]

It's well worth a read; the elegance of Einstein's philosophical understanding is so profound that his ideas unfold almost like a rationalist, a priori metaphysic.

That's because they are a rationalist, a priori metaphysic. Quite why you fail to see the implications of this for philosophy in general escapes me. I can only ascribe it to ignorance of Kant or mental illness.

 

[Jonti]

 

[Mation]

Lbj posting oops

I wasn't suggesting Relativity was simple cause and effect, I was suggesting that what is relevant to the debate over determinism is mechanical 'cause and effect' and so claims that Relativity is particularly relevant to the argument are just bullshit. Infact the reason someone would raise it in terms of Relativity and not Newtonian mechanics of "cause and effect" would be to muddy the waters to try and intimidate a non physicist into conceding the discussion.

I dislike the way you debate because you see aggressive motives where there is only a genuine desire to discuss.

Leaving that to one side, I have thought carefully about the implications of cosmology for free will and one condition that is never compromised is that the future never contradicts the past within any one frame of reference. I'm posting from a phone so I'll have to expand on this later. Suffice to say for now that nothing we do now has any implications for what has happened in our past.

 

[Jonti]

What about forgiveness?

That's something we do in now in the present, but it changes how we feel about the past, and so changes the meaning of the past, allowing different futures to flow from that past event.