Living Reality

[Obbe]

I remember we actually had a pretty long running thread about free will and compatibilism. In case you don't remember my answers would be no and yes respectively.

Therefore couldn't we say that life, or more specifically your own behavior, is an activity which reality is performing?  Is an individual not an expression of the greater whole?

What exactly makes an someone an individual anyways?

I guess I have to answer this myself.  Yes, based on the idea that an individuals will is determind by forces of nature, we can say an individual is an expression of the greater whole, an activity that nature itself is performing.

So what makes someone an individual?   I guess that's a matter of perspective.

[AstralPlane]

Do individuals really have a will of their own?  Or is your will determined by forces beyond your control?

I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.

[Lanny]

I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.

I assume you meant that individuals have free will to pursue what they want, because as it stands that sentence is a contradiction. If that's the case then I've got to ask the usual question aimed at compatibilists: if our actions are a consequence of will, and our will is determined by outside forces, does not the causal chain follow through such that our actions are determined by external forces though nothing more than a proxy? How is that meaningfully different than determinism beyond a different nomenclature?

[AstralPlane]

I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.

I assume you meant that individuals have free will to pursue what they want, because as it stands that sentence is a contradiction. If that's the case then I've got to ask the usual question aimed at compatibilists: if our actions are a consequence of will, and our will is determined by outside forces, does not the causal chain follow through such that our actions are determined by external forces though nothing more than a proxy? How is that meaningfully different than determinism beyond a different nomenclature?

Your right I did mean pursue. To be honest I haven't really ever thought of it like that though. It would make sense. I guess what I meant by my comment is that although outside forces do help to determine our will that we still have to our own will to choose what we want within the confinement of our outside forces. I think I was thinking on a smaller level.

[Lanny]

Your right I did mean pursue. To be honest I haven't really ever thought of it like that though. It would make sense. I guess what I meant by my comment is that although outside forces do help to determine our will that we still have to our own will to choose what we want within the confinement of our outside forces. I think I was thinking on a smaller level.

So this seems to what we would call a librarian position: circumstances may constrain what we can do but we're still fundamentally "free" to choose between what's presented to us. I reject that sort of position and you should too. We can look at the physical world and argue about whether it's deterministic or indeterministic but really it has to be one or that other and neither admits for libertarian free will. If we really think about it the concept is inherently inconsistent.

Consider if we could rewind time and set up the universe exactly how it was at some point in the past and start playing it forward again. Either it would play out exactly the same and we'd arrive back to an unaltered present, or it wouldn't. In the first case free will is obviously impossible because in that case our actions are determined exclusively by the state of the universe most of which is external to us, and the part which is external is directly and deterministically caused by, again, the external (inb4 obbe jerking off about "there is no internal/external", there is and you can fuck off and go read a dictionary if you don't understand that).

If the universe wouldn't replay deterministically then we have a more complicated situation but equally adverse to libertarian free will. The source of indeterminism in our universe can not be internal to any part of the universe. If it was then it'd be what is called a "hidden variable" in quantum mechanics and there would be no indeterminism at all (since sources of indeterminism would be reset as parts of the universe and thus produce the same "indeterminism" (determinism with unseen variables) the same way). So if we accept a truly indeterministic universe then sources of indeterminism must be external to us since we are clearly part of the universe. Thus nothing internal to us is altering the course of history, we're just slaves to indeterminism here like we were slaves to universe-state in a deterministic model.

Also I'm going to try mixing off topic shit posting with a "productive" post to see what happens this time:
If we flip ogge upside down what does it become? ebbo? 3bbo? I like ebbo. Like ebony. Maybe this is a sign that good ole' ogge is actually black.

leggo my ebbo

[Montane]

Chaos never died

[AstralPlane]

I can't sit here and say I do or don't agree with you so to keep it simple....to each their own on the idea...

[Montane]

It's not really a matter of opinion.

Life is the result of processes, creating individuals that can form opinions. These opinions are formed through various things, mostly experiences, and they control our action, along with the physical constraints of patterns we term 'forces.' 
Individuals have their own minds and that necessarily implies an individual will, but putting the word 'free' in front of it just confuses things.

We have our own will and it can change on the drop of a dime.

I guess I have to answer this myself.  Yes, based on the idea that an individuals will is determind by forces of nature, we can say an individual is an expression of the greater whole, an activity that nature itself is performing.

So what makes someone an individual?   I guess that's a matter of perspective.

You can see either the tree or the leaves. Those leaves do have choices, however. Not very broad, but choices nonetheless.
We express nature as nature expresses us. Reality, though, is a moment in which we are all co-creators.

[constantinople]

They are scientific parameters regarding what constitutes life, they are very specific.

[Lanny]

I can't sit here and say I do or don't agree with you so to keep it simple....to each their own on the idea...

It's not really a matter of opinion.

This, jesus, I can hardly imagine a more boring response in this kind of thread than "to each their own". Like damn dude, at least engage with the ideas even if you don't want try and refute them. Or alternatively make comment on Obbe's handle, that's the productive alternative.

[starvingniglet]

Or alternatively make comment on Obbe's handle, that's the productive alternative.

dont do this, he will report you because he is a spineless faggot.  You don't notice the twenty or so posts that were removed because he reported them?

[Obbe]

I believe individuals have free will to determine what they want and need but all that you want and need is controlled by outside forces.

That depends on how you define freewill. 



Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had freedom to act according to his own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained. Arthur Schopenhauer famously said "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."

I think this definition of freewill makes more sense than other definitions, which are in my experience somewhat vague.

We have our own will and it can change on the drop of a dime.

So what are we?

Some would say there is no specific center of consciousness, that "you" are the unity of several different circuits that may or may not be activated at different times, changing who "you" are at these times, and that "will" is the drive to reduce dissonance between each of our active neural circuits.

dont do this, he will report you because he is a spineless faggot.  You don't notice the twenty or so posts that were removed because he reported them?

Please stay on topic.

[Montane]

Man can will what he wills, once he understands what he is. Obviously this present moment is always new and our frontal lobes adapt to that, but we have this memory of our experiences that controls much of our action. Understanding past experience as the past can instantaneously change will. Choiceless awareness.

Yet, in that awareness there is sudden change in perspective, rendering good and bad clear as day; and will a thing to be thrown around out of either evil or love. The self that we identify, sculpt out of experience, in which we take pride-- that self is the centre of our action, from where we judge and label, from where our external interaction stems.

Is the evil within not obviously projected outwardly?

[constantinople]

Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40]
Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36]
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]




So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".

Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths.  Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.

1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.

2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.

3. Metabolism.  Reality does not metabolize or create energy.

4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.

5.


I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all. 


Reality is not alive. /thread.



PS - Free will doesn't exist. With sophisticated enough mathematics and computation technology you could quantify every factor at work on a person influencing their decision making process and pick their decision before they did. We are all at the mercy of ourselves.

[Montane]

Since there is no unequivocal definition of life, the current understanding is descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that exhibits all or most of the following traits:[36][39][40]
Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.,[36]
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[41][42] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[42]




So, now that we have established that parameters for what constitutes a living thing, do any of these apply to the stimulus of "reality".

Reality is static. Changes in the perception of reality are just that, a change in the viewers perception, not in reality. A pair of blue scissors will ALWAYS be blue, based on the science of reflected and absorbed light of various wavelengths.  Any other color perceived by a viewer signifies a change in their processing of the stimulus, not a change in the stimulus itself.

1. Homeostasis - no. reality does not have any control over itself, therefore it cannot have homeostasis. it does not seek to maintain any sort of biological balance of function.

2. Organization. Nope. It is not composed of cells, in fact, it has no concrete composition.

3. Metabolism.  Reality does not metabolize or create energy.

4. Growth. reality is static. it doesn't grow or shrink, only our perception of it and our awareness of it's individual components.

5.


I could go on to do all 7, but there's no point. If it fails to meet the criteria for one it fails them all. 


Reality is not alive. /thread.

I stated all this many posts ago and we have since moved on to discussing the relationship between ourselves, our minds, the universe, reality, and energy.