/lit/ - Literature

Those aren't mutually exclusive.
Answer: There are choices, but what we will choose is predetermined.

>>10809754
Impossible to know anon.
As >>10809760 said, they don't have to be at odds.

>>10809754
Can't you just flip a coin to decide rather than bothering us anon?

>>10809760
>Those aren't mutually exclusive.
>Answer: There are choices, but what we will choose is predetermined.
False. Its a combination of cause and effect that was set in place before you were even born and your own choices that create their own ripples in causality.

Neither. We're blindly following a chaotic path.

>>10810407
>your own choices
aren't your own choices ultimately caused by stuff outside you if you just trace the causes back?

>>10810415
What is this "you" that is being affected by external causes?

>>10810421
probably just a meme? there is the conscious moment I guess, but apart from that, it smells of memery

>>10809754
our paths are revealed to us anon. we're just animals doing things.

>>10810423
By "just a meme" I take it you mean there is no such thing: that's true in a sense. But in this understanding of the self we find of the many paths to the understanding of determinism as nonsense. The determinist will say something like, "you are your brain," but your brain can't said to be "you" formally because if we remove all of your other aspects your disembodied brain itself is as little "you" as a severed hand in and of itself can be said to be "you." The determinist might say, "you are your body," but this is equally untrue for the reverse reason: you can remove parts of your body and yet remain "you." They could say "you are your brain and your body together," but in this case they may as well say "you are you" or "you are John." They provide a definition that cannot possibly be false, a tautology.

All this is the case because "you" are the absolute subject, which cannot be known, since it is the formally linguistic subject of all predicates that are thought. The "I" contained in the thought "I am" is not empirically determined. By this simple truth alone, determinism is shown for the foolishness that it is, since in order for something to be causally determined, it must first be determined, that is, it must be taken as a definite empirical object in cognition, which the self cannot be.

Therefore the rational choices that we make are free, but our bodies (and all that are included within them, namely our brains) are subject to the physical laws of nature.

>>10810497
I don't see how our consciousness impacts determinism. whatever it is it also follows cause and effect surely

>>10810497
/Thread

>>10809754
Who the fuck prescribes the path? If you say God you are automatically wrong.

>>10810516
In what sense "cause and effect"? It is fair to say that consciousness is a cause, since through the act of willing something to be the case and the execution of this will the self can be said to have caused something. It is also the very wellspring of the laws of empirical designation (quantity, causality, power, etc.) as well as the forms (space and time) which bound the use of these laws. Consciousness would then have to be the absolute cause in its own realm, since it is the subject of all things that are thought: it would have to be considered as an unconditioned free cause. But for it to be an empirical cause absolutely, something which, though a cause, would nevertheless of another cause be the effect, is not determinable. Since the self is not determined with regard to experience (it is not an object of experience specifically), it can't be said to exist in time, and because of this, physical causality can't be applied to it.

The law of causality can't be applied to things that are not objects of experience. If it is granted that the self is not an object of experience, it must also be granted that the law of causality can't be exercised on it as it would on an object.

>>10810598
consciousness doesn’t control if volcanic eruptions happen or gamma ray bursts you dumb fucking faggot, and if it does its not capable of consciously controlling these things

>>10810598
>Consciousness would then have to be the absolute cause in its own realm,
I find this highly unlikely. Whatever it is, it is probably caused by something else. Whether it interacts with the physical world or not.

You are clearly not going to agree with that, but the idea of something having no cause makes no sense to me, so I guess we can agree to disagree.

Free will and destiny are the same thing in the end
Just depends on the way you view things. Things will happen to you and you will do things because that's just the way things work. You'll get hit by a car if you cross the street without looking, since the day you were born you were always gonna get hit by that car because of the choices you've been making leading up to that point to get you there

>>10809754
all we have is the illusion of choice; all our choices are already destined by what came before.

>>10810608
It doesn't "cause" them in the sense that, if I think about a certain volcano erupting, it will erupt, but it does allow for them to happen, since absent space and time, it is impossible to describe even a pebble, let alone a volcanic eruption. There is a difference between direct cause and general intellectual provision.

>>10810620
>Whether it interacts with the physical world or not.
How would something be cause outside of time?
>but the idea of something having no cause makes no sense to me
You agree that we don't know as of yet what causes gravity, or any of the other fundamental forces? Yet you are still capable of finding meaning in physics. I'm not saying the self is an essentially physical force, like gravity, since if that were the case we would find what exactly cause it, only that it is possible to treat a thing as relevant without knowing precisely what its cause is.

>>10810679
I don't see time as limited to the physical world, or the 'objects of experience' or however it was you put it. pls no Kant.

And it's not even about what consciousness or the self is, it's about whether it would obey causality, and I feel that it would, because in my own experience of it, my own self, I note things that seem very much like cause and effect.

>>10810608
>implying all material isn't conscious

>>10810696
Time is the determination of the internal sense, of the self relating to the physical world. If time exists outside the mind, then it stands in need of discovery. This would mean that the self does not relate to the physical world until it discovers the mechanism by which it relates to the physical world, in the physical world. But if it cannot relate to this world, it cannot derive knowledge from this world, and therefore cannot discover time. Therefore time not only exists in the mind, but also has necessary reference to the physical world.
>because in my own experience of it, my own self
What exactly is this self that you are experiencing? Like I said, I can find instances of my body being affected by my thoughts very easily. But I can't find an instance of this thing which thinks directly affecting or being affected, since I have no idea how to conceive of it concretely.
>pls no Kant.
You're getting the K whether you like it or not

>>10810598
What do you exactly mean by "consciousness"? If you mean consciousness as the state of wakeful thought then I disagree. I think it is too presumptuous for human subjects, as finite perceiving things, to declare definitively that they exist in a conscious or unconscious state. Would you declare a part in a machine conscious just because it appears as if it is distinct from the whole of the machine?

>>10810746
>But I can't find an instance of this thing which thinks directly affecting or being affected, since I have no idea how to conceive of it concretely.
the pure thing itself maybe, but where determinism is concerned aren't we concerned with the 'objects' of consciousness, specific thoughts, emotions, etc.?

Our body is an automata, our self or mind is just an observer of what the automata does. Everything in the automata is subjected to the external, it just responds "mindlessly", be it a reflex or a apoken answer to an inquiry. Its the same thing. The mind watches and identifies with the automata, thats why the mind thinks it chooses and decides, but it doesnt, its just an observer and you can observe not only in visual ways, but tactile and olfatory. The actual self is a third entity, not the automata or the mind (which is like a program designed to react to the automatas acts), this self is the one which observes the automatas and mind behavior, the very experience of this third entity is what we experience as 'I'.

>>10810835
Tell me if this is accurate summary of what you said. Mind and self are similar as they are both oberving things, but mind is directly associated with body (the automata), while self has an implied association with the body and is the cause behind the feeling of possession one has for their body.

>>10810782
By "consciousness" I do mean wakeful thought, but it is the subject that possesses this consciousness that remains when a person is unconscious, not consciousness itself, because to say one has consciousness when one is unconscious is a contradiction. But something must "restart" this consciousness after unconsciousness, and begin the new day as this thing which has access to the memories and skills of the conscious mind. The subject must remain whether conscious or unconscious, since it is possible to consciously distinguish between the two (i.e. tell conscious life from a dream through the use of universal laws of nature). The subject receives the impressions of the conscious world and the unconscious alike.

>>10810790
Isn't the task of any absolute determinism to show precisely and definitely how pure consciousness is acted on by material factors?

If you don't believe you have a choice, you don't actually have a choice you know what I mean

>>10810942
>if you don't X
>then you actually don't X
Correct

>>10809754
objectively no subjectively yes. What goes on around you is fixed but how you interpret it is up to you, and in a deeper sense than what just those words might convey. Same noumena (don't kill me kantfags if this is the wrong usage) around you could lead to the same person being a happy blue collar worker with a wife and kids or also to a depressed unmarried scientist purely b/c the external signals are interpreted in different ways on the subjective level, ie noumenal signal that for one means hapiness for the other means depression.

>>10810407
That's the same as what he said, in a way. The choices are ours to make, based on our our world/experience, but that choice is predetermined by the causes/effects of the universe. E.g. free will is an illusion rooted in the origin of the universe.

does the answer actually matter?

>>10811008
> free will is an illusion rooted in the origin of the universe
>not the origin of the universe is an illusion rooted in free will

>>10810924
I agree with you that the subject (the perceiving thing) exists as the receiver of all potential perceivable stimuli. I don't believe in the duality of consciousness and unconsciousness. The claimed two states possess too many of the same qualities for me to see them as distinct. Either all material possesses a varying degree of consciousness which changes as matter changes; or no material is conscious and all phenomenon is unconscious and wholly mechanistic. As the finite perceiving thing I've found myself in, knowing which state I definitively exist in seems unknowable, as I cannot perceive either state of being. All I know is that this experience is that of a perceiving thing.

>>10811008
Yeah I guess I kinda regurgitated what he said in a way that makes most sense to me.


>>10810415
There are some choices that are inherently spontaneous and random due to our own particular inate human nature. Put two different people in the same scenario and there is a good chance there will be a different outcome. Some things are simply random and I cannot subscribe to the belief that "everything happens for a reason (meaning, not causality)"

>>10811060
>I don't believe in the duality of consciousness and unconsciousness. The claimed two states possess too many of the same qualities for me to see them as distinct. Either all material possesses a varying degree of consciousness which changes as matter changes; or no material is conscious and all phenomenon is unconscious and wholly mechanistic
Don't you see what a contradiction this is? The very division you say you ignore is the one you rely on as a basis for your potential understanding of the world. Both of your cases amount to the same thing, anyway: if consciousness changes as the matter changes, this condition is equally as mechanistic as one lacking consciousness entirely, because all consciousness is reduced to material modes. They are likewise both dissipated by the same consideration: that to determine an event, a cause and its concomitant effect, the idea of cause and effect, which is not a material thing present anywhere in the world, must be present. The claim that there is no consciousness is itself a conscious idea.

As for the Cartesian demon, he is banished by the consideration that, while dreams are irregular, conscious life abides by fixed and rigid laws. I can tell my waking life from a dream because in waking life I have an anticipation of perception, while in a dream I have no such thing.

>>10810920
Yeah, sort of. Havent developed or reflected on it yet, its something i thought todays afternoon before taking a nap.

>>10810942
>>10810976
No, he means the old "if you think you dont have it, then you dont" , the prescriptive powers of the mind over behavior. But of course all that is hard causated.

>>10811012
It would reform the entire penal system. And our whole conception of morals.

>>10811127
>Don't you see what a contradiction this is?
I see how you could think that.
>rely on division as a basis for your potential understanding of the world
No, they are only two of many potential truths behind the cause of this subjectivity. Regarding both of my examples, if either one were definitively true, then the duality between the two wouldn't exist, as only the true one is possible to exist in. A finite perceiving thing cannot experience consciousness and unconsciousness as these things are not perceivable; meaning if our reality truly is one or the other or something else, that knowledge is unknowable.
>Both of your cases amount to the same mechanism because all consciousness is reduced to material modes
Yes, that is what I meant by "The claimed two states possess too many of the same qualities for me to see them as distinct". It reinforces the fact that these ideas do not exist as a pair or duality, but as the same state in regards to material.
>They are likewise both dissipated by the same consideration: that to determine an event, a cause and its concomitant effect, the idea of cause and effect, which is not a material thing present anywhere in the world, must be present.
In both my examples, I implied that, whether conscious or unconscious, the material is inseparable from its consciousness or unconsciousness; One substance. I am not assuming any particular causality behind the circumstances for this reason.
>The claim that there is no consciousness is itself a conscious idea.
I perceived the idea in a dream.
>As for the Cartesian demon, he is banished by the consideration that, while dreams are irregular, conscious life abides by fixed and rigid laws.
The totality of those laws is unknowable, at least by our finite perceptions. Now you are assuming causality.

>>10810569
Idk, the best philosophical concept Ive found that replaces the soul is willpower

>>10810569
>doubting God
For what reason???

>>10810569
causality

>>10810746
...he's here...

>>10810497
Time is a flat circle, faggot. Next.

>>10811666
whatever you say, Satan

>>10810411
Now this is a take