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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2017 18:39:23 GMT
You know perfectly well what I meant. Obviously, I mean a deterministic/mechanistic account of human decision making in which the outputs that we create are a product of all of the inputs, with no magical 'ghost in the machine' (except perhaps randomness) that we can point to and call 'free will'. The philosophical term is actually anthropic mechanism (which distances it from machines). So while everything that exists/has ever existed may not be a mechanism, an anthropic mechanist would argue that humans can be understood and explained as a series of interacting parts. I think the biggest problem with it is that eliminativism is unavoidable because mind is never "presented" or appears as a series of parts. And then it inherits all the criticisms that come with holding eliminativism as true. Since you see "suffering" and "pain" as real and hold anti-natalist views, I'm guessing you would not be an eliminativist but that mental states are epiphenomenal (without-effects) in some way? Would that be right? I'm told Sam Harris believes something similar. Thanks for providing the philosophical term. I don't know where I stand in relation to those other philosophical concepts (I don't read philosophical texts), but I do believe that suffering is the most important and valuable event that occurs in the universe, and must never be wasted without extremely good reason. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 8, 2017 18:57:08 GMT
tpfkar There are too few people that can provide good parental support. Too many people just have kids without giving it a thought - it's what their friends are doing, or their parents expect to have grandkids or, oops, the birth control failed. The 'pro-lifers' only care about the fetus before it's born; once it's out of the uterus, they couldn't care less about how the child is raised, can the mother be a good mother at age 15, will the child be abused or neglected. And they certainly don't want their tax dollars going to more social aid programs. And no one seems to think about whether the earth can continue to support as much life as there is now. I look at pregnant women in the grocery store with another two kids in tow and wonder, what are they thinking, bringing more kids into a world that is going to be stressed to the max. I know I made the right choice. My non-existent children were spared a dysfunctional childhood and troubled life. I feel my life has been enriched by not having children; I've pursued other interests. The animal rescue groups I have volunteered with have a policy; any animal that comes in to the rescue is spayed or neutered before being put up for adoption. No unwanted litters to be abandoned, drowned or thrown into a dumpster in the heat of summer. And if an animal comes in that is too sick to survive and is suffering, it is humanely euthanized. Reduce the suffering. I think that most of the research tends to validate your reflection that your life has been enriched without the need for producing children. And people are increasingly starting to see that the perceived need for children is a trick that is being played upon us by a DNA molecule. The ecological argument against having children is gaining some traction, and perhaps give some reason to be optimistic that people will start to consider whether it is worth imposing suffering and risk. The pro-life medievalists are still completely in thrall to their base biological instinct (through the lens of theological commandments), and will always sacrifice quality in order to maximise quantity; but there is certainly a trend towards more people being able to transcend their raw genetic programming. This shows that many people are able to grasp that they don't owe some kind of debt of obligation towards a non-existent entity. The logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that there is an obligation not to impose risk and harm on a potential future person to which that individual cannot consent; but there's a long way to go before significant numbers of people begin to make that logical next-step. Love how you try to somehow associate people having kids and "Pro-Life".  Standard broken morbid nutcasery. And "obligation not to impose risk and harm on a potential future person to which that individual cannot consent" - booby hatch stuff.
Morally I would be fine with post-birth abortions, but I realise that this would probably be too radical to ever be implemented. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 8, 2017 19:07:44 GMT
tpfkar Nope, it's free. We pick. All regular people have ever meant. And the mental asylum gush was a perfect example of your crashes in rationality. Need for reform doesn't yield suicide pills for cowards. We pick the only option that we can pick under any given set of circumstances. And Christians are 'regular people' whose theology requires that they be able to override their own preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances. This is necessary both to exculpate God for the suffering which exists (and lay 100% of the blame on human free will), and also to allow an individual to be 'saved' even when absolutely all causal factors and the individual's predisposition are conspiring to prevent the individual's salvation. Christian reliance on "free will" can be argued away rationally by "God" giving them all their traits, which they do believe. That doesn't take away their free will nor responsibility, as they are what they are, however good or bad they are, but it firmly implicates a creator god as reprehensible. It is both nonsensical to "override one's preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances" and not what Christians hold, not the way you use. Whatever they do is by definition according to their "preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances". Not the same thing as urges and dissonances in which they ultimately choose which matters to them more - still according to their traits and preferences. It 's trivially obvious that we all do that all day long. Ifs buts candies nuts. We can't stop those who aren't displaying mental illness from committing suicide, so your "don't allow" is just another of your canards. And regardless, this doesn't address your incompetent use of horrid treatment in third-world asylums as meaningful to anything save not torturing/neglecting patients but instead giving good care. Nothing at all to do with funneling the mentally compromised to permanently harm themselves. Who cares what irrelevancy you have never brought up. Pushing the mentally ill over the cliff as opposed to treating their maladies with a goal of improvement is somewhere between the height of negligence and pure eugenics to the point of ultimate species sterility. This is of course nonsense. We as individuals see, choose, do. Unconstrained externally (what we think, want, attempt, not necessarily succeed at). Regardless of your meaningless framed babble about "come up with a list of the factors which act as constraints to freedom". I'm not interested in what serves what zealot. Only in what is, as best we can know. Certainly not the self-contradicting derangements of the hopeful species-ender partisans.
If true, then it is cute, cuddly, fuzzy and multicultural because Muslims are (mostly) brown. That takes precedence over any moral concern. |
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Post by captainbryce on Sept 8, 2017 22:24:24 GMT
Here's an interesting passage in Matthew:
So when Jesus says he could call on the Father to send angels to save him, does that mean he literally could have done so and events would have played out differently (and Scripture not be fulfilled)? Or is he merely saying he theoretically has the power to do so but he could not actually do it as that is not how the future is set out?
Yes, he could have literally done that
Jesus was second in command so he could do anything he wished.
Prophecy would have played out differently which means the outcome could have played out differently or he could have killed them all and allowed to be arrested still and be killed.
Wrong! I can't believe I'm about to do this, but in this case I actually have to agree with Erjen. The fact that Jesus was "second in command" (as you call it) is irrelevant. Jesus specifically stated that he can act ONLY in accordance with God's will (God in this case being the father, not the son). John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me John 8:28-29 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Therefore the answer is NO. Jesus could not and would not literally have done that because that would have contradicted God's will. Events were always going to play out exactly as God preordained. Scripture must be fulfilled (otherwise it becomes useless, and God's word becomes useless). Jesus even proves this himself in a completely different example: Matthew 26:51-54 With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2017 23:09:22 GMT
Christian reliance on "free will" can be argued away rationally by "God" giving them all their traits, which they do believe. That doesn't take away their free will nor responsibility, as they are what they are, however good or bad they are, but it firmly implicates a creator god as reprehensible. It is both nonsensical to "override one's preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances" and not what Christians hold, not the way you use. Whatever they do is by definition according to their "preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances". Not the same thing as urges and dissonances in which they ultimately choose which matters to them more - still according to their traits and preferences. It 's trivially obvious that we all do that all day long.
If true, then it is cute, cuddly, fuzzy and multicultural because Muslims are (mostly) brown. That takes precedence over any moral concern.Simply eliminating the form of free will that Christian theology requires (with the exception of Calvinism) would be far more straightforward and efficient, and would put the apologist in the position of needing to use science and the rules of logic to uphold their faith. Free will (in the absolute, libertarian sense) is the cornerstone of Christian theology. If that can be taken out, then the entire edifice of Christianity disintegrates. I believe that, according to Christian theology, humans are 'fallen' vis-a-vis a talking snake in the Garden of Eden. Meaning that God created good beings with free will, and humans were tempted by the forces of evil into using that freedom for evil purposes. Christians may not describe free will as "choosing what one thinks before thinking it", but that's a matter of cognitive dissonance whereby they refuse to give a concrete definition of the scope and mechanisms of free will in order to maintain the integrity of their emotional safety net. Much like you are doing. Unless they subscribe to Calvinist doctrine, Christians simply cannot plump for anything less than absolute free will (the incoherent type), constrained by nothing, because anything less than that degree of freedom will impugn God's reputation as being both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Why should mental illness be a life sentence in cases where repeated courses of treatment are unsuccessful? Surely you would agree that a person with mental illness hasn't done anything wrong that warrants sometimes decades of interminable suffering? And someone with severe paranoid schizophrenia probably may as well be chained to a bed in a spartan chamber of an Indonesian mental asylum, as far as they are concerned. They are likely so consumed with their psychotic delusions that they don't register where they are and what's being done with them in reality. And given that 'original sin' does not exist in reality (i.e. people haven't done anything deserving of suffering just by dint of the fact that they were born into the world), that means that suicide should be freely available to absolutely everyone, in a form that is 100% risk free, as close as possible to 100% pain free and as fast acting as possible, and which allows them to say farewell to their friends and family and have those people present at the time of death without anyone calling the emergency services and raising a hue and cry. "Unconstrained eternally" (as in free from coercion) is the very same type of "free will" that Daniel Dennet and other 'compatibilists' subscribe to, and they believe that human behaviour is completely deterministic and mechanistic. In the context of this discussion, religion is cited to substantiate my assertion that the incoherent definition of free will must be the most commonly believed paradigm of free will. This is further substantiated by the draconian criminal justice systems which still obtain in most jurisdictions of the world, in which the individual convicted of a crime is punished as though they could have been something other than what they are. In a mechanistic universe, once a crime has been committed, we know that the perpetrator could have done nothing other than commit the crime, thus making a nonsense out of the concept that there must be retribution for the act, rather than just a measure of deterrence and protecting the rest of the population from the criminal. The idea of hating someone and wanting to inflict suffering on someone just because of what they are and couldn't help but be is shown to be utterly absurd. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2017 23:48:11 GMT
Obviously not a straight-forward task that can be accomplished before anyone else has to experience more suffering. There should be a guarantee of no non-trivial suffering before any more lives are introduced. Which is impossible because, even if things had somehow gotten rectified in the present time so that nobody had to suffer, it would be impossible to guarantee that such a utopian situation could not be destabilised or destroyed. And it is related to child rearing (or child birthing, more precisely), because the person could not experience suffering were they never to have been born. Can't really be done within the limits of human nature. Communism was an attempt to do this, and most would agree that the cure ended up being worse than the disease. Meanwhile, in capitalist societies, there are people who have more money than they and their families could use in 500 years still trying to prise away (metaphorically) a crust of stale bread out of the mouth of a starving child because it's considered to be 'unfair' for anyone to be allowed to consume any resources that they or their parents aren't thought to have sufficiently earned, or the parents' don't have a respectable or hard enough job to deserve to be able to feed themselves and their children. Which all illustrates that life is mostly about cravings which can never be completely satisfied, no matter how proficient one becomes at 'the game'. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 9, 2017 0:21:33 GMT
tpfkar So make life better for them. Still nothing attached to child-rearing inherently. Obviously not a straight-forward task that can be accomplished before anyone else has to experience more suffering. There should be a guarantee of no non-trivial suffering before any more lives are introduced. Which is impossible because, even if things had somehow gotten rectified in the present time so that nobody had to suffer, it would be impossible to guarantee that such a utopian situation could not be destabilised or destroyed. And it is related to child rearing (or child birthing, more precisely), because the person could not experience suffering were they never to have been born. For the mentally sound, when there's a problem one works on addressing it with something short of genocide+. If one still possesses one's faculties, anyway. But that boat sailed long before more of that boobie hatch banter about dead can't care no risk of splinter is moral attacking nonexistent babies by giving them a shot at life. Not with guys like you, for sure. In truth, things keep trending better even with the zealot bumps, as the sociopathic mentally ill rarely gain power once liberalism takes hold, and when they do they are generally time-limited.
And they shouldn't be expected to pay the price of everyone else's joy. Especially if nobody would be deprived of that joy in a universe with no sentient life. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 9, 2017 0:35:52 GMT
tpfkar Christian reliance on "free will" can be argued away rationally by "God" giving them all their traits, which they do believe. That doesn't take away their free will nor responsibility, as they are what they are, however good or bad they are, but it firmly implicates a creator god as reprehensible. It is both nonsensical to "override one's preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances" and not what Christians hold, not the way you use. Whatever they do is by definition according to their "preferences, conditioning, biases and circumstances". Not the same thing as urges and dissonances in which they ultimately choose which matters to them more - still according to their traits and preferences. It 's trivially obvious that we all do that all day long. Simply eliminating the form of free will that Christian theology requires (with the exception of Calvinism) would be far more straightforward and efficient, and would put the apologist in the position of needing to use science and the rules of logic to uphold their faith. Free will (in the absolute, libertarian sense) is the cornerstone of Christian theology. If that can be taken out, then the entire edifice of Christianity disintegrates. I believe that, according to Christian theology, humans are 'fallen' vis-a-vis a talking snake in the Garden of Eden. Meaning that God created good beings with free will, and humans were tempted by the forces of evil into using that freedom for evil purposes. Simply saying the Screwy Death Fairy (who somewhat favors a fried Tinkerbell) told you so would be even more straightforward and efficient, and perhaps even have the edge in effectiveness. Babbled out of-the-ass blather, much like "Organic Robot Paradigm". As you repeatedly demonstrate, people can and do subscribe to any manner of self-contradictory, dishonest, and emotion-fed views. As related many times before, because of the patent uncertainty of whether the illness or the person's actual desires are speaking. The vast majority are some kind of stress-induced and/or treatable conditions in which they need help, and certainly not partisan malice in the guise of "freedom" for their pathology. And of course, the "Original Sin" of harming nonexistent kids by having them does not exist. But the religious do still push that kind of inanity. I know you state that you believe it as part of your partisan efforts. But your overt admissions of dishonest motivation coupled with the fact that your every action here contradicts a sound person believing it makes it worthy of wry chuckles only. No, you have repeatedly cited your war against religion as opposed to honest inquiry/appraisal as your motivation. In what you pretend, you'd have to have been made at the start to be some combination fundamentally dishonest with the bizarre slants/ emotional non sequiturs, and cognitively impaired enough to not be able to grok that believing no alteration is possible yet trying furiously to make things "better". For the undertakers and sociopaths, maybe.
And if society wants the fairest possible state of affairs, that would mean no humans and no society. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 12, 2017 21:49:49 GMT
tpfka Babbled out of-the-ass blather, much like "Organic Robot Paradigm".   Such as the absurd idea that choice is absolutely free from causality, despite the fact that it is constrained by preferences, disposition, bias and circumstances. As related many times, mental illness is not a gremlin or evil homunculus that creeps into someone's head whilst they are sleeping. It doesn't have its own goals and volition, it describes a function of their brain. The individual's self is nothing more than their brain and the function of their brain; much as the idea of mind/spirit duality has a lot of emotional resonance with you. If the patient repeatedly and unwaveringly holds to the view that they would prefer death, then this is their preference. And if the Christian God would be worthy of criticism by forcing sentient beings to live in a harmful and dangerous world, then logically that must also apply to those who know of the harms and dangers, yet still see fit to subject a new life to those risks. The truth and nature of reality has no concern for whether or not it can be used to bolster a particular agenda. And it is not possible to choose not to choose. Not knowing the outcome of a particular action forces an actor to behave as though they do have free will, even whilst knowing that there is no such thing. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 12, 2017 22:30:37 GMT
tpfkar tpfka Babbled out of-the-ass blather, much like "Organic Robot Paradigm". I thought you were into dudes? Good to know where you're getting your scientific and political views from though. Sure, but since "everything has causes", your line is just more of your nonsensical arse-pulling. Sure you've repeat-chanted, but you're an admitted partisan fed by patent inanity who puts his morbid goals ahead of truth. People often get into temporary and/or treatable states where they say and do things that they subsequently highly regret. I know, I know, if in their manias they kill themselves, they can't regret.  If a physically sound patient can't get the trivially accomplished once actually decided deed done without involving other people, then nobody has any business sending them to their doom. The Christian God is worthy of criticism for purposely causing harm. If he's giving a shot at this blast and it's the best he can manage, and he's actually a sweetheart without all of the malice in the Bible, I'll personally buy him all the beer he can knock back. And nobody who is not deranged or making narcissistic scenes is "forced", regardless if you personally don't have the gonads. And yet you keep citing it as your argument. And it is possible to hold deranged contradictory views, or at least you're able to post them as your own. Do you go debate with waterfalls? You supposedly can't even recognize that by your own beliefs you are fated by the Billiard Revelation (wait, who broke?) to feel urgency over things you have absolutely no ability to personally effect. If you found you an opium den, or if you lay down in front of a train, or if you managed to get control of a chemical weapons plant you'd still make absolutely no alteration to your god of preset Fate. Sad broken stuff.
And if society wants the fairest possible state of affairs, that would mean no humans and no society. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 0:40:51 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 13, 2017 0:54:38 GMT
tpfka Sure, but since "everything has causes", your line is just more of your nonsensical arse-pulling. If "everything has causes", there's no need for the adjective "free", since the adjective can only be meaningfully used in relation to causality. I have already laid out a solution which would help to prevent suicide in those experiencing short-term crises, whilst respecting the wishes of those who have exhaustively tried all of the treatments that are available. You don't want to do anything about the very treatment resistant cases, and making people afraid to come forward about suicidal ideation causes them to be deprived of the treatment that could help them break out of that rut. An individual cannot know whether they have made the wrong choice unless they regret it. Regret is the only way to assess that a bad decision has been made. When someone is born, they have no way of resisting or refusing, and therefore they are forced. And if they are suffering as a young child, they do not have a way of ending the suffering. If they are severely disabled, they must endure a lifetime sentence of suffering and indignity because medievalists such as yourself still get to codify their own existential fears into the laws that have to be obeyed. I don't hold any contradictory views on the subject. Determinism is not the same thing as fatalism. Since I don't know what the future holds or what role my actions will play in the unfolding of that, then I cannot behave in any other way but that which is conducive to the eventual outcome. And of course whatever eventually happens must happen, could not have been avoided, and will be one link in a causal chain of events. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 13, 2017 0:57:25 GMT
tpfkar I thought you were into dudes? Good to know where you're getting your scientific and political views from though. Sure, but since "everything has causes", your line is just more of your nonsensical arse-pulling. Sure you've repeat-chanted, but you're an admitted partisan fed by patent inanity who puts his morbid goals ahead of truth. People often get into temporary and/or treatable states where they say and do things that they subsequently highly regret. I know, I know, if in their manias they kill themselves, they can't regret. If a physically sound patient can't get the trivially accomplished once actually decided deed done without involving other people, then nobody has any business sending them to their doom. The Christian God is worthy of criticism for purposely causing harm. If he's giving a shot at this blast and it's the best he can manage, and he's actually a sweetheart without all of the malice in the Bible, I'll personally buy him all the beer he can knock back. And nobody who is not deranged or making narcissistic scenes is "forced", regardless if you personally don't have the gonads. And yet you keep citing it as your argument. And it is possible to hold deranged contradictory views, or at least you're able to post them as your own. Do you go debate with waterfalls? You supposedly can't even recognize that by your own beliefs you are fated by the Billiard Revelation (wait, who broke?) to feel urgency over things you have absolutely no ability to personally effect. If you found you an opium den, or if you lay down in front of a train, or if you managed to get control of a chemical weapons plant you'd still make absolutely no alteration to your god of preset Fate. Sad broken stuff.
And if society wants the fairest possible state of affairs, that would mean no humans and no society.      
The 'organic robot' paradigm of human decision making is now scientific orthodoxy, and there are no credible challenges to this |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 13, 2017 1:31:51 GMT
tpfkar tpfka Sure, but since "everything has causes", your line is just more of your nonsensical arse-pulling. If "everything has causes", there's no need for the adjective "free", since the adjective can only be meaningfully used in relation to causality. Sure it's 'free" in that we choose according to our traits and preferences, and we (attempt to) do. At that point "we" are the cause. All that normal people have ever meant by "free will". Certainly not your partisan amorphous fantasy vapidities. Your "solution" brings about orders of magnitude more suicides then it would prevent. But once they're dead, they can't care, so, eh, we're ahead in the no sentient game. You're interested in all people having access, so "treatment resistant" is bs, and regardless, any such cases should spur more research and more aggressive palliation treatments, not morbid extermination goals. In any case the government cannot sanction the highly immoral act of purposeful harm to the mentally incompetent. Sure, booby hatch stuff. Don't make the world better, snuff it out like any good psychopath. I'm pretty sure you'd make a fine "medievalist" burning all of the witches in the asylums. You hold pure bonkers views on the subject. Of course you don't know what will happen - irrelevant to the derangement; of course you supposedly believe you can't behave differently - irrelevant to the derangement. The relevant insanity is "knowing" this and believing that you acting one way or the other could possibly have any effect on any direction of anything. You might as well argue with your toaster as with people. You believe the (unknown) outcome is preordained and people have no ability to really choose anything. If I came to believe such a thing I'd just chuckle and marvel at the rest of the talking toasters. Not that different than how this conversation's been, I suppose.
And if society wants the fairest possible state of affairs, that would mean no humans and no society. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2017 10:45:54 GMT
The entire cornerstone of Jesus' message is "Free Will".
"For God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
He states many times you have the freedom to follow or ignore Him.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2017 14:06:15 GMT
tpfkar If "everything has causes", there's no need for the adjective "free", since the adjective can only be meaningfully used in relation to causality. Sure it's 'free" in that we choose according to our traits and preferences, and we (attempt to) do. At that point "we" are the cause. All that normal people have ever meant by "free will". Certainly not your partisan amorphous fantasy vapidities. Free will is fundamentally the ability to have done otherwise at a specific juncture, and it's impossible to imagine how that would be possible. Nobody disputes the idea that our brains make choices, but if that was all you were referring to, then you'd have no qualms with the "brain research" cited by Dogbert in one of the cartoons above, and previously cited by myself. Even if the studies were flawed in their methodology, the conclusions would still seem obvious if all you really meant was choosing according to our desires, preferences, etc. And no lesser form of free will than this is required for forms of theology which are subscribed to by the majority of the population. Not necessarily, because it would draw in those who may otherwise have rashly committed suicide but could have benefitted from psychiatric help. Once you know that you're not going to be confined to a psychiatric ward indefinitely and forfeit your freedom, and that ultimately the people who help you are bound to respect your final choice; you are no longer afraid to seek out help. Even if my assertion would not turn out to be true, at least it can be known that the people who are assisted to die are people who have given it very serious and deliberate thought, and have reached a firm conclusion. Of course, everyone should ultimately have the right to suicide, whether they have severely treatment resistant depression, or they're just bored with life. But my proposal helps to catch the ones who can be helped and support them back to a lifestyle that they find worthwhile, whilst refusing to place limitations on the autonomy of those who don't think that life is worth living at any cost. And again, to assist someone in peaceful death is not to commit harm, it is to enable that person to avoid harm. A dead person cannot be harmed any more than a stone can be harmed. Nobody should be forced to contend with the risk of non-trivial suffering just because other people think that the world is "good enough" or can be made "good enough". "First, do no harm" is not the psychopath's creed. Deciding to risk the wellbeing of those who cannot consent with the mindset that some kind of good may eventually result is reckless, myopic and selfish. One cannot be resigned to a certain outcome if one has no way of knowing what that outcome is. Therefore whatever I do is part of the chain of causality which helps to determine the final outcome. Fatalism is not consistent with determinism, or with reasoned thought. And determinism doesn't mean that nothing can ever change, it means that things are always changing. Therefore just as dropping a plate onto a hard surface will cause that plate to shatter into many fragments, having a discussion can be and is productive in helping to change ideas. When I drop the plate, I don't know how many fragments are going to be produced by the drop of the plate, and I don't know what the outcome of having a discussion is going to be. But cause and effect prevails in both cases. I'm not doing anything to try to prevent a cause from effecting, or frantically swimming upstream against the inexorable tide of causality; I am part of that causal chain. And yes, this discussion has been at times like talking to a toaster; given that scared little men who are terrified of confronting the absurdity and meaninglessness of their existence are wont to stand fast by their beliefs. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 14, 2017 14:48:26 GMT
tpfkar Sure it's 'free" in that we choose according to our traits and preferences, and we (attempt to) do. At that point "we" are the cause. All that normal people have ever meant by "free will". Certainly not your partisan amorphous fantasy vapidities. Free will is fundamentally the ability to have done otherwise at a specific juncture, and it's impossible to imagine how that would be possible. Nobody disputes the idea that our brains make choices, but if that was all you were referring to, then you'd have no qualms with the "brain research" cited by Dogbert in one of the cartoons above, and previously cited by myself. Even if the studies were flawed in their methodology, the conclusions would still seem obvious if all you really meant was choosing according to our desires, preferences, etc. And no lesser form of free will than this is required for forms of theology which are subscribed to by the majority of the population. Your "imagination", or rather actual honest appraisal is circumscribed by your partisan motivations. Peeps make choices based off their traits and preferences. And I have no problem with Dogbert or any other comic characters who distort and exaggerate for comedic purposes, as that's what they do and it's fun and funny. Those who are unintentionally comedic are fun too. Nope, necessarily, by orders of magnitude, as they are responding to their crushing guilt or loss or whatever with great urgency, and not concentrating on making themselves not care about it. As for the mentally incompetent, it's just horrifically immoral to send them to their doom when they are in the grips of a mental illness. To assist a mental illness to bring about the death of a person is categorically immoral and in fact reprehensible. If you're too bored, stop being so narcissistic and trying to vitiate the whole system based on your personal fecklessness and narcissism. Booby hatch stuff. Both "Nobody should be forced to contend with the risk of non-trivial suffering" and what you think is and is not harm. One can be sane to the fact that no matter what they do or not do will make no difference against their God Fate. More booby hatch stuff. Whatever you "know" (harderharharr) or don't know, no action or inaction can change the course that was set up at the outset. The "ideas" molecules are already on their irreversible path. Your urgency and actions are patently deranged in the face of such "knowledge". 
Morally I would be fine with post-birth abortions, but I realise that this would probably be too radical to ever be implemented. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2017 1:18:01 GMT
Booby hatch stuff. Both "Nobody should be forced to contend with the risk of non-trivial suffering" and what you think is and is not harm. One can be sane to the fact that no matter what they do or not do will make no difference against their God Fate. More booby hatch stuff. Whatever you "know" (harderharharr) or don't know, no action or inaction can change the course that was set up at the outset. The "ideas" molecules are already on their irreversible path. Your urgency and actions are patently deranged in the face of such "knowledge".
Morally I would be fine with post-birth abortions, but I realise that this would probably be too radical to ever be implemented.Those cartoons are funny because they contain a truth and observe how people react to truths that they don't want to know, but are also unable to refute. And the author of those comic strips is not 'distorting'; he does not believe in free will: scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/12/26/scott-adams-on-free-will/dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/asses_and_free_.htmlAlso, this new article came up on VICE which has an interview with a neuroscientist on free will: www.vice.com/en_uk/article/mbqwjx/you-have-no-free-willYes, and if they had a cooling off period where they knew that (state facilitated) suicide was very much an option but were given assistance to explore other alternatives (which they otherwise would be too scared to explore due to fear of being effectively criminalised and losing their freedom for an indefinite period of time), then this would help a lot of people though these short term crises. And it is horrifically lacking in empathy to insist that you know better than someone else whether or not their suffering is worth enduring. It's also incomprehensibly absurd to carve out an exception to the usual rule that it is legal to assist someone in acting lawfully. Life always contains harm. Only if life can be guaranteed harm-free should someone even consider the possibility of making new life. Yes, but nobody is God and nobody knows what the outcome of their actions will be. Only in knowing the future can one be resigned to what happens in the future. This is true, but I don't know where the ideas molecules will end up. I used to be very staunchly in favour of procreation (even posting the lyrics for 'I've never been to me' to 'prove' that having children was indispensible for a fulfilling and meaningful life: www.metrolyrics.com/ive-never-been-to-me-lyrics-charlene.html), but exposure to new information changed my life. If I drop a plate, then that plate goes from being a functional plate to numerous broken fragments of ceramic on the floor. With ostensibly no magic involved, the plate transitions from being one useful object occupying one state to many different useless objects occupying a range of different states. But I would not write an angry letter to the manufacturer demanding to know why they bothered to manufacture that plate if it was just going to get broken anyway. |
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Post by cupcakes on Sept 15, 2017 1:37:14 GMT
tpfkar I know you try to push it, but it's absolutely self-contradictory. And you still push one side of it only in your overtly-admitted partisanship. What's he saying other that we act according to our traits & preferences? Nope, that's just stuff you've made up. Competent people who've considered and actually decided wouldn't involve other people, and those at impulse are tinging about what they're fixating on, certainly not a 73 hour stay in a facility. And "effectively criminalised" is just yet more of your Orwellian babble. Ain't it grand? But "harm" is really just an illusion anyway. But the "guaranteed harm-free" is pure cuckoo-land stuff. Ain't life grand! Thank Fate it's a great ride (that you can hop off at any time) and keeps trending better. Your problem is looking at everything from your direct personal selfish benefit. And I have no doubt at all that you've careened from one extreme to another.  So why do you keep bitching about parents, er, I mean moist plates? And by the way, "useless" is just an illusion.
Morally I would be fine with post-birth abortions, but I realise that this would probably be too radical to ever be implemented. |
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Post by lenlenlen1 on Sept 15, 2017 20:34:35 GMT
Here's an interesting passage in Matthew:
So when Jesus says he could call on the Father to send angels to save him, does that mean he literally could have done so and events would have played out differently (and Scripture not be fulfilled)? Or is he merely saying he theoretically has the power to do so but he could not actually do it as that is not how the future is set out?
Well, I do know this: You're asking us to interpret science fiction. Is Luke really Vaders son? Does the one ring really rule them all? Does Santa have to give gifts every year? They're all questions on the same level. |
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