Current Events > 7am philosophy. because why not. riff on this consciousness and free will thing

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Consciousness is the faculty of awareness unto which bodily precepts are pooled into integration of an identity distinguished as a single entity apart from the existence it inhabits. The identity of lower animals and organisms operate from instinctual patterns from those integrated precepts and on downward to as rudimentary as single sense stimuli reaction. Unique to man is the ability of conception creation by the process of abstraction from perceptual integration---abstraction is performed by volitional effort---by will. Thus the first instance of will in its most fundamental sense is the act to think or not to think---a freedom to chose either. Thought begets knowledge created by syllogistic abstractions by a method of non-contradictory integration---logic. Broader concepts then allow for accurate observations and judgements in order to survive; this is the basic mode of rationality. To ever arrive at the long, end chain of a choice between near infinite actions, the fundamental root at the start, which man has built its foundation upon, has been ever present between the choice of thinking or not thinking. It is the first controllable primary of identity of any individual.

The objection that the brain and thus the mind inhabits the physical world and can be altered by material forces, which allegedly leads to determined outcomes, can only affect tertiary actions, if at all. First off, the ability to abstract is unaffected and already defeats the principle of determinism. Secondly, what an individual sets as his prime value to strive for is not a contradiction that his free will has been bankrupted by choice of a single path when near infinite paths were opened to him. Determinism thinkers want free will to be any action for anything at anytime at any cost out of context to how individuals operate toward their chosen value goals. Thirdly, whatever inconsequential preference an individual has like an artist inclination for the color blue used over red does not sabotage his freedom to be an artist. And it should go without saying that for whatever personal reason, that individual can chose something against habit while still inline with his chosen, wider goal.

The inspection of influence upon a man to act in one way and not another appears to limit choice of action but never free will. Critical examination of the hierarchy of values starts with this: act to sustain life or die. The first choice is a complex web while the second is simple---the abruptness of only these two outcomes is ever present and is always a choice.
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Let's say I take a time machine and travel back 10 years.

Everyone will do exactly the same thing as they did. Unless I act on the past to change something, every single action, every single breath taken by everybody will remain the same. If you had the chance to start over, but without the benefit of new knowledge you didn't have at first, you would to everything the exact same way and make the same mistakes all over again.

Also just think about how deeply some people's behavior are affected by chemicals, like alcohol or antidepressants. Just a small bit of some substance is enough to change their thoughts and behavior. Maybe we just aren't as much in control as we like to think we are. And also, maybe animals are a bit more in control than we give them credit for.
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frozenshock posted...

Let's say I take a time machine and travel back 10 years.

Everyone will do exactly the same thing as they did. Unless I act on the past to change something, every single action, every single breath taken by everybody will remain the same. If you had the chance to start over, but without the benefit of new knowledge you didn't have at first, you would to everything the exact same way and make the same mistakes all over again.

Also just think about how deeply some people's behavior are affected by chemicals, like alcohol or antidepressants. Just a small bit of some substance is enough to change their thoughts and behavior. Maybe we just aren't as much in control as we like to think we are. And also, maybe animals are a bit more in control than we give them credit for.

indeed. the first paragraph is called determinism iirc.

and after some thought experiments, i concluded that it's the only solution that makes sense. you can't change the future unless you know the future. hell, even on picking pizza or hot dog for my lunch is already predetermined with this complex web of invisible string of cause and effects. like trillions millions of them going back to the birth of our universe itself. it

and yes, consciousness are overrated and overpraised. it's just a side effect of chemistry that makes protein copy itself. life itself, from the simplest bacterias and the most genius person in the world are just an extension of chemistry made complicated by emergence. it's just some complex life, especially humans have reached the singularity of that chemical process into something that seems like much more than the things its made of.

emergence itself is almost like force of nature, much like magnetism, or gravity. from millions of simple things doing simple activities at the same time give birth to complex and intricate pattern that's much much bigger than the part of its sum.
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oh yeah, the fact of that life are nothing more than chemical reactions goes haywire isn't as depressing as it is. the fact that we have basically transcended from basic chemistry means that we can experience all these nothingness and make it a joy for us.

this is imo where philosophy helps science. life has no meaning. the universe has no meaning and will die a cold cold death some trillions of years in the future, but you and i are real, at least we really can feel and sense the universe around us, and we have the ability to give something empty a content. we can fill the darkness of life and existence with anything we want. we have the ability to give the universe itself a meaning and i hope it is the one that makes you happy when you do it. pump that dopamine!
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The alternative for the consciousness and the mind to be unfettered by the physicality and chemistry of life is for mankind not to be mankind---we would have to be ghosts with no physical capacity to preserve "pure" free will. But what then is a ghost with no physical senses and thus no perception and thus no conceptions and thus no anything. Is non-existent entities the logical end for deterministic thinkers? What an obvious contradiction.

What human behavior is can be observed by science for predictions of propensity to act in one way or another---which varies wildly from civilization to civilization, from ancient time eras to modern and all those inbetween---only leading to temporal hypothesis but never principled determination that indeed man, at his quintessential nature, is a determined being. How could that ever be proven?

@frozenshock
@apolloooo
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myzz7 posted...

The mindset free of determinism itself, in my opinion is born from the ability to imagine outcomes and the possible different scenarios. The ability to imagine "what ifs" and "what could have been" give birth to the illusion of free will. Yes, you have to be an immaterial ghost to be free of those thing. In the physical world, such things could not exist, but the mind, the brain, an unknown wonder as it is, are capable to emulate the universe of your experiences. There exist your interpretation of the objective universe based on the information you get from sensing organs , and also exist interpretation of that interpreted universe. That layers of reality are created and governed by the part of your physical brain that allows you to imagine. In that world, a "ghost" version of you exist where it possible to move from timelines or multiverses of your mindscape where all the branch of times are available and free for you to move on freely.

For example, lets divide the universes into several categories. The base universe. This is the objective universe, where all off matter, energy, etc exist as all it is. All spectrun of light, all kind of matters, waves frequency, vibrations, all of it.

Then there is the perception of universe. We are biological creatures that so far only evolved to observe parts of the universe. In this universe, only the visible spectrum of light exist, only 200 < x < 20000 hertz of soundwave exist and all the things humans are limited to what our sensor organs are capable of sensing. (This of course are extended by all the devices, tools, discoveries that allows us to translate the invisible into visible and make us to acknowledge the things that we thought dont exist actually there)

then there is the tertiary world of imagination where it is conjured when you think "damn i should have just hotdog instead of chitpotle" when you secrete fire from your ass.

Some people of course mix the tertiary world with the perception world/secondary so that range of options exist. With lots of options, the illusion of choices exist. With the illusion so powerful, the concept of free will exist.

As for the second paragraph,

Well, i guess it may never be proven, but the progress of searching the answer should never be ignored.

In science, nothing is ever absolute, but each new findings brings us closer to the truth with more, newer and better data backing it. Thus, the finding of modern sciences, while still not the absolute still more valid than ancient superstitions rooted from ignorance or tradition just by the data and partial evidences we have.

In the world of no absolutes, then 5 data backing a thing is more valid than 2 datas backing another thing.

And science, when done in the right way, is way more objective as a way of thinking and creating hypothesis.

A perception of consciousness will vary from places to places because of set of sociological and psychological variables, but the same science experiment done right will aways be the same result whether it is done by a group of scientist in 1937 germany or done by bunch of kids in nepal in 2037.

As long as the variables, methodology, and all the constant reviews and and scrutiny, the result of science can transcend trough space and time as we know.
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If you want a few good books on these topics:

The ego tunnel
The origins and history of consciousness
How to create a mind

Ego tunnel is neat because the thesis is basically the concept of the self (as in "I am the thinker of my thoughts) is also a product and a state of consciousness and doesn't actually exist.

How to create a mind is neat because it's Ray kurzweil

Romes187 posted...

If you want a few good books on these topics:

The ego tunnel
The origins and history of consciousness
How to create a mind

Ego tunnel is neat because the thesis is basically the concept of the self (as in "I am the thinker of my thoughts) is also a product and a state of consciousness and doesn't actually exist.

How to create a mind is neat because it's Ray kurzweil

Thanks.
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@apolloooo

It seems to me that you and I would agree that consciousness and free will is akin to scientific facts; such as the laws of gravity---in the base universe as you call it. I go further to affirm consciousness and free will to be axiomatic and not liable to the circular process of the scientific method: consisting of hypothesis, testing, and discovery. As an example, while it might incontrovertibly true the Earth revolves around the sun, a nuclear catastrophe could destroy civilization and technology and that knowledge with many other truths would be lost for centuries. "Facts" would change until proven otherwise again with no one of the past civilization to hold on to that truth.

There is a world of difference in having conviction with demonstrable proof that man has agency in his actions. To choose life, to choose rationality, to choose good, to choose his values, to choose certain people to be apart of his life, to choose fulfillment, and to choose self-esteem. The power is in the recognition that man exerts power to control his life, even if its to struggle at times and fail, to know he can try again and have integrity. With that power also presupposes the responsibility to act accordingly, and will feel shame when knowingly committing evil. An individual should strive for complete comprehension of the philosophical reality of the world and subsequently the values he pursues thereafter---and then act to achieve.
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bump
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hey its 7am again
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I've always leaned on the deterministic side, myself.

We say we have choices, but we only have them insofar as our brain's ability to identify and interpret patterns allows it. We think we can choose between two things, because our brain can predict the outcomes of either options (within the limits of its own experience). But inevitably, we only ever make one choice for any given decision. Nobody has ever made the "other choice."
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twas the day of xmas eve during the 7th hour of the morning that TC did bump this topic.
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Big booty bitches
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Turtlebread posted...

Big booty bitches

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whoops i kinda forgot about this topic.

myzz7 posted...

It seems to me that you and I would agree that consciousness and free will is akin to scientific facts; such as the laws of gravity---in the base universe as you call it. I go further to affirm consciousness and free will to be axiomatic and not liable to the circular process of the scientific method: consisting of hypothesis, testing, and discovery. As an example, while it might incontrovertibly true the Earth revolves around the sun, a nuclear catastrophe could destroy civilization and technology and that knowledge with many other truths would be lost for centuries. "Facts" would change until proven otherwise again with no one of the past civilization to hold on to that truth

i agree there. whatever facts so far are just within our perception universe. an information can be a fact when enough individual agree to it and it is valid while the base universe's truth is so far unreachable. but so far i think our species has made enough progress to make us at least feel a degree of accomplishment in unraveling the smokescreen, even that one day it might be lost to the world as we know it.

myzz7 posted...

There is a world of difference in having conviction with demonstrable proof that man has agency in his actions. To choose life, to choose rationality, to choose good, to choose his values, to choose certain people to be apart of his life, to choose fulfillment, and to choose self-esteem. The power is in the recognition that man exerts power to control his life, even if its to struggle at times and fail, to know he can try again and have integrity. With that power also presupposes the responsibility to act accordingly, and will feel shame when knowingly committing evil. An individual should strive for complete comprehension of the philosophical reality of the world and subsequently the values he pursues thereafter---and then act to achieve.

and also agree. to acknowledge determinism is to give up agency. why feel bad about murder when you think it is predetermined? why try accomplishing something when you have no agency? to life in balance, acknowledging that determinism while living like our actions have consequences is at hte same time hard to do and quite hypocritical.

i have yet to find my stance on that, but the closest thing i can argue is going back to the base and mind universe again. it maybe your actions are all set in stones in base universe, but we lack the ability to know which strings pull the puppet, so as far as our mind universe go, if your thought of murdering someone cause you to act on it, then it happens because so.

i dunno. do you think blaming everything on our lack of perception kinda a cop-out?
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So to try to explain further why materialistic determinism is flawed in a brief manner (hard to do as books can be written with much needed detail to grasp this firmly) here is some further philosophy fun:
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Consciousness and free will is the subsequent phenomenon to the material universe---the only universe as distinguished from the non-existent supernatural realm. What in fact is the proper clarification of the perspective of man regarding his place in existence is this: "I am therefore I think." and not "I think therefore I am."

The recognition of the law, A is A, is an irreducible primary unaffected by observation. That axiom has its own laws on how matter interacts with matter. Where the conflation of consciousness enslaved to the infinite machinations of chemistry and material comes from the equivocation of how living entities are emphatically different from inanimate matter. A rock moved by the pressures of the world around it has no life, no consciousness, no sentience and is thus determined to whatever fate impinges upon it at any time. What man possesses is life---which unlike matter can cease to exist entirely by the state of death---and so the inevitability of life itself in fact forces man into an irreducible choice: life or death---but by what means? What is our tool to sustain life? The mind. How? By thought.

There are number of uncontrollable factors that can be said, to thrust life, upon an entity and some of those entities such as low functioning animals do act to live as I said in my previous post. What man possesses in his fundamental nature, immutable and inescapable, is ability to act for life or against it.

To retread some ground in order to be as clear as possible, because the brain is material and has electrical impulses and whatever else chemical processes that allows for the process of abstraction and other functions of the consciousness---does not invalidate choices to be made. It does not even determine the ultimate fate in the sense that death is inescapable and thus we're determined to death and that's why free will doesn't exist and we're determined---no, because free will does operate for the life we inhabit and not the corpses we are after when life has finished. No one "lives" or experiences itself as a inanimate, dead corpse.
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Imagine if you took all that language and made it actually concise. Perhaps you could fit that entire post in a couple simple sentences. Might sounds less profound lol.
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JACKBUTTMOMMY posted...

Tag.

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COVxy posted...

Imagine if you took all that language and made it actually concise. Perhaps you could fit that entire post in a couple simple sentences. Might sounds less profound lol.

The language I use is actually an attempt at conciseness from the mountains of meaning surrounding this subject. Unfortunately lax simple sentences would probably be nice for long-form formats such as a book but lol no not a brief post online.
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By the way, announcement about my OP, I'm a big dummy for using "precept" and not "percept" in all instances I use that word.

for instance this should be:
unto which bodily percepts are pooled into integration of an identity

and i dun goofed it up.
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