/lit/ - Literature

>>11577688
the 4 chan one

"12 rules for life"

>>11577691
fpbp

The Bible
Antifragile
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Bible
The Art of Deal
Tao Te Ching
The Art of War
The Prince
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Leviathan
The Power of Now
The Bible
Starting Strength
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Culture of Critique
Moby Dick
Jurassic Park
Revolt Against the Modern World
Decline of the West
The Bible
Finnegan's Wake
Artemis Fowl
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
12 Rules For Life
The Bible

>>11577836
What the fuck does JoJo change in you.

>>11577688
Stirner

>>11577836
>Being Christian in the 21st century
The whole of Christianity's theological history has been an attempt to circumnavigate the impossible architecture of its flawed morality through a turning inwards on itself, a kind self-conflation that makes it impenetrable and impassable. To attempt to make sense of Christian morality is to attempt to make sense of a dream that you only partly remember - there is no centre, no narrative, no rationality, no hope - only conflicting shards of meaning that theologians have attempted to balance in a doomed circus display in order to justify their own beliefs, while of course maintaining that this conflict, this paradoxical cycle of thought that consumes itself through its own nonsense and lack of logic (or 'mystery' and 'faith') is in fact the entire point or somehow inherent to the religion, as if our inability collectively to understand is somehow proof of The Bible's divine providence, and not simply proof of its absurdity and obvious fallibility.

>>11577688
will to power, zhuangzi, the book of disquiet, journey to the end of the night, leopardi's canti, alberto caeiro poems, extinction

>>11577883
This pretty much.

>>11577883
>there is no centre, no narrative, no rationality, no hope
*blocks your path*

>>11577937
How about ''it's not true''

>>11577688
Animorphs actually taught kiddie me about stoicism, and being a man even when life sucks.

>>11577836
This is a bad post

>>11577688
Ulysses (Joyce)
Finnegans Wake (Joyce)
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche)
Nohow On (Beckett)
Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
The Recognitions (Gaddis)
JR (Gaddis)
Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner)
The Georgics (Virgil)
In Search of Lost Time (Proust)
Hamlet (Shakespeare)
Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare)
Sonnets (Shakespeare)
The Oresteia (Aeschylus)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
The Faerie Queene (Spenser)
The Divine Comedy (Dante)
On Being Blue (Gass)
The Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton)
The New Science (Vico)
The Cantos (Pound)
Ficciones (Borges)
Summer's Last Will and Testament (Thomas Nashe)
Nausea (Sartre)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein)
Chimera (Barth)
Dead Souls (Gogol)
Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
Arcadia (Stoppard)
The White Devil (Webster)
The Pilgrim's Progress (Bunyan)
The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Brecht)
Mother Courage and Her Children (Brecht)
The Essays (Bacon)
Six Characters in Search of an Author (Pirandello)
Pale Fire (Nabokov)
Letters from a Stoic (Seneca)
The Master Builder (Ibsen)
The Seagull (Chekhov)
Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories (Chekhov)
The Tennis Court Oath (Ashberry)
The Lovesong of J. Alfred. Prufrock (Eliot)
The Wasteland (Eliot)

>>11577836
based
>>11577981
cringe

>>11577952
Do you have a single fact to back that up

>>11577688
The Will to Power, Parmenides and The Castle

>>11578223
Many.

>>11578267
Then name one.

>>11578277
Problem of free will.

>>11578287
What problem of free will

>>11578304
The main argument against the problem of evil is that evil happens because God gave humans free will, and is then fit to punish then if they use that will to cause evil.
But that's wrong. Humans have no free will and thus God's punishment of sinners and saving of believers makes no sense. If the christian God acts the way we are to believe he does then he is utterly insane and none of his actions ever made any sense whatsoever.

>>11578336
>Humans have no free will
Do you have a single fact to back that up

>>11578408
Many.

>>11577981
How did the Faerie Queene change you and why is it worth reading? Any tips on reading it?

>>11578408
The universe is deterministic being one?

>>11577836
subtle enough. good post.

>>11577836
>Leviathan
woke af

>>11577883
based, and redpilled
>>11577981
cringed, and poopilled

>>11578336
>thinking God has to act according to human rationality
>thinking God is nothing more than a 'powerful being' who is in any way similar to us
Also, read Boethius as he adequately counters the problem of free will.

>>11579466
How can you adequately counter a fundamental reality of physics? And the arguments ad nauseam that God's completely illogical and incoherent actions somehow lend credence to his existence, shows the completely fallacy at the heart of Christianity. Somehow the obvious inability of Christianity to account for its dissonance with the reality of the universe as we see it, or its own textual absurdities and theological goose chases, is held up by Chrisitans as greater proof - it's all just some divine plan and logic that we'll never understand.

When Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov played IBM's Deep Blue Computer in a rematch in 1997, the computer's 44th move puzzled Kasparov so greatly that he attributed to the AI's incredible intelligence and foresight, that it was thinking so far ahead of a human that what seemed a illogical was in fact a grand plan beyond human conception. It was revealed later by Deep Blue's programmers that the move was, in fact, a bug - the AI defaulting to a state of selecting a legal move at random - what Kasparov had read as a kind of chess divinity beyond his imaging was, in fact, randomness. A pretty apt metaphor, I feel.

>>11580036
>How can you adequately counter a fundamental reality of physics?
Elaborate.
>And the arguments ad nauseam that God's completely illogical and incoherent actions somehow lend credence to his existence.
It isn't used as an argument for or against God's existence, but as a response to the arrogance of atheists who falsely assume that all that may potentially exist must adhere to limited human understanding. God is, by definition, infinitely differentiated from ourselves. Atheists tend to falsely assert the position that God is essentially a more powerful human, rather than understanding God as a metaphysical entity; as Being rather than a being.

>>11580147
Their is finite matter in the universe (though it makes no difference if there is infinite matter) - individual matter interacts with other matter in set ways, and that matter, from its conception in the original cause (the big bang), can therefore only ever follow a set path of interaction, the universe can never be other than what it is, every choice we make is determined only by these set interactions. If you knew the position and interaction every particle, you'd be able to calculate mathematically, the entire future. The only think that has cast doubt on this is quantum physics, what with its wave-particle duality and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - however, these things seem to simply be a gap in our knowledge that we previously thought filled, and with further understanding we will likely come to the reasons for this interactions (at a level of complexity above and beyond classical physics).

You have no free will, none of the choices you make are your own, I'm afraid.

>>11580298
>You have no free will, none of the choices you make are your own, I'm afraid
*scoooooooooop*

>>11580363
Nice argument

>>11580298
Extrapolating the laws of physics to the human brain and our interaction with other human beings seems fallacious. We have empirical evidence to prove Newtonian theory in the physical world, but not so when examining human behaviours. We know with absolute certainty what the effect will be when an object acts under gravity, but we do not know with absolute certainty the effect a particular action will have on another person's decision making, and I think it would be absurd to suggest that we will.

Even if free will was empirically untrue, it would still be phenomenologically true. Regardless of how much you intellectually accept that the universe is deterministic, you will continue to act in your daily life as if you have free will (not dissimilar to how you also assume that the physical world around you exists). It is such a fundamental truth that you can never begin to eradicate it, so it would be natural to simply accept it as true - as we do with other assumptions in our life.

The existence of God, even under these circumstances, would not prevent the existence of free will. If the Christian God exists, then we have a metaphysical Self which is above the laws of the natural world, and thus, can direct itself as it sees fit.

>>11580392
To the first part, I don't see your point? Why do you humans work outside of the nature of the universe? We are still the result of the fundamental cause and effect of the universe, and of set interactions, human beings are physical, our own consciousness changes nothing, it is still the result of the universes inherent properties, as is what I'm typing now, and everything I believe, and everything you believe, and everything that's ever happened in your life. If we could have calculated the universe at its nascence all of this would have been accounted for.

I don't understand your second point. Being under the illusion that you're under free will proves what exactly? I have already said that I don't believe in free will, so as far as I'm concerned it is literally impossible for me to act in any other way or think any other thought than the those that I have - that isn't to say that the previous experiences don't guide my actions, in fact the opposite, determinism means that previous events have a direct effect on everything that I do now. We only have the past and its events. I think people lose track of the idea here because the complexity of human thought and the feeling of freedom in our choices suggests something more, but there is no reason why the universe can't be the way it is because of this, I mean, it is simply the way it is and the 'miracle' of human existence and consciousness and love etc. needs nothing else than this to explain it. The universe is everything

>>11577875
Now I pose every now and then.

>>11580444
>The universe is everything
Did the universe create the laws by which it is governed?

>>11580493
The laws exist, there is no act of creation needed

>>11580444
>If we could have calculated the universe at its nascence all of this would have been accounted for
This is my fundamental problem. This is an assumption as seemingly absurd as believing that there exists objects or aspects of reality beyond the material world, yet you accept the former and reject the latter. If I said to you "I cannot prove the existence of God to you now, but there will be some undisclosed time in the future, which we may or may not be alive to experience, that will prove this possibility", then I would imagine you would consider that to be an unreasonable position. But if I said "I cannot prove the existence of determinism, but there will be an undisclosed time in the future, which we may or not be alive to experience, that will prove this possibility", you would find that reasonable, when they are no more reasonable than the other. Supernatural phenomena also has a mound of empirical evidence to support it (accounts of religious experiences, miracles e.t.c.), so again, my issue is that you've created an arbitrary limitation on your own understanding of existence. The type of faith which you criticise Christians for having is the same type of faith you have in the validity of sensory experience or in established science or in the ability for humanity to have a total understanding of the universe.

>Being under the illusion that you're under free will proves what exactly? I have already said that I don't believe in free will, so as far as I'm concerned it is literally impossible for me to act in any other way or think any other thought than the those that I have
When you make a decision in your daily life - irrespective of its importance - in that moment you will treat it as being freely chosen. You do not conceive of yourself in that moment as being an agent of causes and effects, but a free agent. As such, it's as much a given truth as the fact that I'm currently typing on a real keyboard. If we are to doubt this, then what else must we doubt? This of course isn't accounting for the fact that if we are to accept determinism as true, then the question of how to police morality or even what morality is arises. The only way I can see us navigating such quandaries is to accept that free will is real, unless you have any alternatives.

And to bring this back to your original comment, nothing you have said prevents the existence of free will simultaneously with the existence of God, in fact, it's a solid justification for the former's existence.

>>11580532
I know this isn't a response to me, but if no act of creation is needed, why must human behaviour be caused by an external agent? Why can there not be a metaphysical Self which is self-causing? Or indeed, why can there not be a God which is uncreated?

>>11580532
If the laws just exist without being created they must be infinite.

If they are infinite they then must also predate the Universe.

Therefore the laws must be outside of the physical universe if they existed before the physical universe, but then how do laws governing matter exist with no matter.

If they do not predate the universe then they must have been created with the universe. If that is the case, your claim that "there is no action of creating needed" must be false.

>>11580547
Why is calculating the universe's entirety absurd? Possible, no, but not absurd. The logic does not rely on actually doing such a thing - it relies on the inherent mathematical principle behind it - every particle and every interaction can be expressed mathematically (as a numeral and a function, respectively) - if you knew each one of those things, you could calculate everything that will ever happen. It is logically sound, in the same way that Pi is infinite without us having to show it through producing every digit infinitely.

I think it is your view that is narrow - you have difficulty conceiving of the universe as being able to explain phenomena, but I say that the universe, being everything, explain those things by it being everything - that those things you talk about unaccounted for in a universe that is by definition every part of existence? There is an in-universe explanation for everything, the universe being everything, so, why try and find justification somewhere that is beyond it? Every thought and experience you have is within this universe, so therefore all of those thoughts and feelings within this universe are a product of it, including the spiritual and supernatural, they are accounted for in the universe's infiniteness. When you realise this, you can then free yourself of the labyrinthine confusion and existential confusion caused by the paradoxical non-thought of religion, the kind of thought that places faith in some indefinable pattern that no one in history has been able to follow, or these questions of free will and morality and evil that are unanswerable, because you realise that it is unnecessary and that the universe, being everything, in all its entropic glory, is all that's needed. Believe in the universe as the fundamental starting point and you remove a cloud of absurdity. Maybe that won't make your life any better or your satisfaction any greater and maybe it won't even feel like you understand anymore, but that lack of understanding is due to the complexity of things, and not due to the hollow semantics and language games that define Christian theology.


Why is it as much a given truth as you typing at a keyboard? Because you, wrongly, believe something to be true, other true things are then brought into question? I don't why you repeat your point on this. You're misunderstanding the fundamental point, the universe is unchangeable and is following a set trajectory, your individual beliefs on a conscious level do not effect this, even if you believe they do.

Here's the other sticking point - you bring up morality. Morality is a Christian concept, there is no morality that permeates the universe, it is an invention on our part. Using it as an argument as an argument for free will is like eating an apple and then saying that this proves there is no longer such a thing as food. But of course, as everything is predetermined, I suppose you can't be blamed for thinking this, nor I for what I think.

>>11580578
This a merely a language argument and has no value.

Laws are not physical, they do not have dimensions or properties, the idea of them being 'infinite' in any sense that we perceive, or even a mathematical one, is in correct. Likewise, definition of the universe on these terms is difficult. I could argue that the universe exists as long as these laws have, which is always, and therefore they do not 'predate'. Likewise, the laws and the particles can be thought of as inseparable and having been created instantaneously, or that in fact thinking of interactions and matter as separate is in fact incorrect (see String Theory as a way of thinking about the forces in terms that remove this disparity). But either way, this idea of an 'outside' of the universe is incorrect and your understanding is flawed. There is no outside or inside, nor is there an overarching temporality in the universe other than in the motion of particles

>>11580298
Ok you guys roast on stemfags but this is what happens when you get rid of them.

>>11580634
Could we not theoretically prove the existence of God in the same way? Why is this not possible under the same parameters?

>There is an in-universe explanation for everything, the universe being everything
How is this any different from saying 'God moves in mysterious ways?'
>these questions of free will and morality and evil that are unanswerable, because you realise that it is unnecessary
They are not unnecessary. The question of how we should act within the world and towards others is a fundamental part of our existence, and your perspective gives no clear answer on how we should act, or more importantly, its potential answers are quite catastrophic for humanity.
>Maybe that won't make your life any better or your satisfaction any greater and maybe it won't even feel like you understand anymore, but that lack of understanding is due to the complexity of things, and not due to the hollow semantics and language games that define Christian theology
No, the lack of understanding is also due to the complexity of things; it's simply what the thing is that changes. Your use of the universe as the central axiom of meaning, I would argue is far more problematic than placing God as the central axiom of meaning.

>Why is it as much a given truth as you typing at a keyboard? Because you, wrongly, believe something to be true, other true things are then brought into question? I don't why you repeat your point on this. You're misunderstanding the fundamental point, the universe is unchangeable and is following a set trajectory, your individual beliefs on a conscious level do not effect this, even if you believe they do
Let me put it another way then. Why do you believe sensory experience has validity? You assume that it does on faith, because you cannot prove the validity of the tools by utilising the same tools, thus you are accepting it as a given truth, even if you do not have the supporting evidence. The same is true of free will. In the moment of a decision, you believe you act freely and is so deeply engrained within us, that we cannot break free of it even if you intellectually reject it. Even if you intellectually reject the validity of sensory experience, you will still continue to act as though it does have validity. Surely to doubt these fundamental truths would create greater existential confusion than a belief in God would?

>Here's the other sticking point - you bring up morality. Morality is a Christian concept, there is no morality that permeates the universe, it is an invention on our part. Using it as an argument as an argument for free will is like eating an apple and then saying that this proves there is no longer such a thing as food.
It proves the necessity for us to accept free will as a truth, even on the condition that what you say about determinism - which I am rejecting for different reasons - is true. Do you propose we abandon morality?

>>11580660
>Laws are not physical, they do not have dimensions or properties

Laws do have properties. If they did not have properties then they would not exist, not even conceptually. The laws themselves may not be physical, but they depend on the physical to exist. I.E. if there were no physical there would not be laws. Something cannot govern that which does not exist.

>I could argue that the universe exists as long as these laws have, which is always, and therefore they do not 'predate'.

The universe cannot be infinitely old. See Zeno's Paradox or the infinite steps paradox. If the universe is infinitely old it cannot have been created. Regardless, you claimed that the Universe was created by the big bang in an earlier post.

>Likewise, the laws and the particles can be thought of as inseparable and having been created instantaneously

If the laws and the particles are inseparable then the laws are a part of the particles themselves. If they are a part of the particles then they had to have been created with the particles. (in the big bang according to you). This is entirely contradictory to your claim that the laws did not need an act of creation. If they are included in the nature of the particles, as you suggest, then they had to have been created with the particles.

> this idea of an 'outside' of the universe is incorrect and your understanding is flawed. There is no outside or inside, nor is there an overarching temporality in the universe other than in the motion of particles

That which is governed has to be subordinate to that which governs. Otherwise the governing principles are not laws at all. All things have to be dependent on causal things. Two things cannot be mutually dependent because they would be the cause and effect of the other. The laws which govern particles have to be outside of the universe which the particles inhabit. If they are a part of the universe then they do not govern anything at all.

>>11580660
>This a merely a language argument and has no value.

Makes a baseless claim and gets thoroughly dismantled.

>"muh semantics."

>>11580740
You talk about things as problematic in regards to understanding and meaning and morality, but in what context. You say that placing the universe at the axiom is worse is negative, but I'm saying there is nothing else, these things you talk about don't exist, there is no meaning or morality and we can understand our selves in anyway we choose (or don't choose) but it makes no difference to the wider truth which is that the universe is a cold place and owes you nothing and there is no moral truth or ultimate judgement and there is no creation or intelligence behind it. Yes we should do away with morality, defined as they are on things that don't exist, and the cause of pain and suffering for people in countless numbers throughout history, physically, mentally, existentially. Do away with and there is no promise that this will change, but at least we will then see the simplicity in suffering, which is that it is just inevitable and without reason. This change of course all depends on every interaction in the universe happening to coincide with this shift in thought, and maybe an awareness of this is too scary a prospect to entertain for most

>>11580752
But his 'dismantling' is literally just more semantic babble that any physicist would balk at

>>11580790
Physicists are now infallible and above the philosophical suppositions that the scientific method is based on

>>11580786
>You say that placing the universe at the axiom is worse is negative, but I'm saying there is nothing else, these things you talk about don't exist, there is no meaning or morality and we can understand our selves in anyway we choose (or don't choose) but it makes no difference to the wider truth which is that the universe is a cold place and owes you nothing and there is no moral truth or ultimate judgement and there is no creation or intelligence behind it.
Well, I have rejected the truth of your statements, because I don't think your position is any more reasonable than a religious person's; you've merely shifted the context. You seem to view the Universe itself in a quasi-religious manner, where all of its mysteries can be explained away as the Universe acting in mysterious ways rather than God acting in mysterious ways. Similarly, you believe that the Universe is irrational and are comfortable with this truth, yet you hold God to a standard of rationality. In this sense, I don't see where your rejection of God's existence comes from.

Not to mention >>11580746 has provided a far more compelling and eloquent counter-argument than I ever could.

>>11580746
There is no such thing as age, time is only defined by particles and their interactions, as stated. It is a way of expressing these interactions and thinking about in any other terms is flawed. Those paradox's are, as I have said, purely arguments of language in regards to abstract ideas, they have no basis in the physical or mathematical. The universe may just have come into existence, there need be no further level than this, as hard as that is to comprehend, the arguments you make against the universe's sudden existence can be applied to God. The point is that abstract thought is actually, perhaps counterintuitively, far more narrow minded a view than the purely physical - but the abstract is subjective and therefore is mutable to your own falibilities and therefore you can mould it around them, but there is no truth there. The world of pure mathematics or those of physics, being out of the scope of most people's range, leads to most people clinging on to their abstractions or their vague conflictions of faith, theology, semantics, philosophical arguments, to counteract their inability to understand reality through its own devices. This is the root of theology and unfortunately your arguments are nothing more than your attempts to define concepts you don't understand within the confines of parameters you yourself have set. The universe is everything and is responsible for everything and contains everything by definition and I'm sure that horrible existential uncertainty just fill you with dread as you keep trying to justify the existence of your God to yourself rather than admit that you were wrong or that their is no one and nothing beyond and us and no ultimate order or judgement, but stop resisting

>>11578596
It taught me that life itself is an allegory. The best way to read it is aloud with the big red version.

>>11580816
I'm saying the workings of the universe are completely unmysterious, they are interactions between particles. This we know. I'm also saying that ideas of free will could never be true because the human brain is a product of and continuing process of these interactions. Now if you wish to believe in a deterministic God then very well but then what of what purpose or morality? God is a null on that understanding of things

>>11577883
Its not that hard to understand unless you want to work for the awnsers as i did.

>>11580837
>purely arguments of language in regards to abstract ideas, they have no basis in the physical or mathematical
Mathematics is abstract, not physical.
>The point is that abstract thought is actually, perhaps counterintuitively, far more narrow minded a view than the purely physical - but the abstract is subjective and therefore is mutable to your own falibilities and therefore you can mould it around them, but there is no truth there
How is abstract logic more subjective than the study of the physical world?
>>11580855
>I'm saying the workings of the universe are completely unmysterious
You have acknowledged that there are gaps in our knowledge regarding the universe - hence there are mysteries in the universe. You say that we will eventually understand these mysteries; no different to how the mysteries of God's nature will be revealed once we die. Again, I am not understanding where your specific rejection of the existence of God is coming from.
>I'm also saying that ideas of free will could never be true because the human brain is a product of and continuing process of these interactions
Again, this is purely theoretical, no different from the theoretical justifications for God acting as He does.
>but then what of what purpose or morality? God is a null on that understanding of things
How so? It gives far clearer answers than what you're proposing.

>>11577688
Catch-22
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The House of Mirth
Candide

>>11580876
I agree sir

>>11580876
There are mysterious regarding specific interactions, but no mystery in the overall framework.

Because the physical world exists and abstract thought explores concepts that don't align with the actual nature of the universe, or are otherwise wholly unconcerned with it.

I think separating maths and physics made clear that maths isn't physical - it is abstract under certain utility, and completely logical under another - simply a tool for tracing the universe, if you will

The interaction of matter is not theoretical, it takes place. Nor is the composition or interaction of neurons within in our brain under dispute. They are for all intents and purposes, fact. Everyone's universe, no matter what their subjective experience, is united under these unquestionable fixtures of the universe, interactions between particles, fundamental forces - the same cannot be said for faith or religion or morality

>>11580876
The universe isn't about answers, how is this difficult to understand? There is no answer to satisfy the question of morality because it does not exist. Just because your want there to be one it doesn't make it untrue that there isn't. There is no creator and no morality and your inability to accept that is based on your desire to find some meaning in human behaviour that isn't there

>>11580924
>There are mysterious regarding specific interactions, but no mystery in the overall framework
Again, the overall framework is not necessarily a mystery if you believe in God either, but in our relation to God. This reads more as a moving of the goalposts, my point is still fundamentally unchallenged, particularly given the fact that you think those specific interactions will be revealed to us at some stage in our development.

>Because the physical world exists and abstract thought explores concepts that don't align with the actual nature of the universe, or are otherwise wholly unconcerned with it.
The principles which underpin the scientific method are abstract. I also don't see how the concepts >>11580746 discussed are irrelevant to the universe. He is addressing much of the same terminology you have been using (cause, effect, laws e.t.c.) and this terminology is essential for understanding the processes being discussed.

>I think separating maths and physics made clear that maths isn't physical - it is abstract under certain utility, and completely logical under another - simply a tool for tracing the universe, if you will
Pure mathematics is entirely abstract and you have stated that you believe pure mathematics to be of value, so I'm yet to see why you would reject that anon's use of abstract concepts other than the fact that you simply disagree with his conclusions, whilst you seemingly agree with the conclusion of these mathematical problems. Also, the infinite steps paradox is primarily mathematical.

>The interaction of matter is not theoretical, it takes place.
Yes, but as you said, the nature of the interaction is theoretical, which is what we were discussing.
Nor is the composition or interaction of neurons within in our brain under dispute. They are for all intents and purposes, fact.
>Everyone's universe, no matter what their subjective experience, is united under these unquestionable fixtures of the universe, interactions between particles, fundamental forces - the same cannot be said for faith or religion or morality
You yourself acknowledge that there are strong disagreements within the scientific community on the nature of the physical world, one which you chalked up to being a 'gap in our knowledge' (again, another instance of you assuming on faith that your beliefs are true, not dissimilar to those who are religious).

>>11580936
>The universe isn't about answers, how is this difficult to understand?
What I find difficult to understand is your selective acceptance of universal, assumed truths, whilst rejecting others with no apparent reason. I understand your position, what I don't understand are the reasons you have for your position. They simply don't add up for me.

I'm going to get some sleep now. If the thread's still up tomorrow, I'll respond, if not, then I won't. Good discussion nonetheless.

>>11581007
I'm going to sleep to because my brain is melting but want to address this:
>You yourself acknowledge that there are strong disagreements within the scientific community on the nature of the physical world, one which you chalked up to being a 'gap in our knowledge' (again, another instance of you assuming on faith that your beliefs are true, not dissimilar to those who are religious).
Let me use an example - though art historians might disagree on the type of paint used in a section of The Salvator Mundi, there is no dispute that the painting exists. The uncertainties you are picking on have no bearing on the wider certainties of the universe, they don't change the fundamental reality. I'll try and make my points more clearly in the morning if this is still here. Nice discussion

>>11577688
Ulysses by James Joyce is the only one that has had a totally mind-expanding impact on me. Not even some of the craftiest PoMo writers can really get someone to the vantage point Joyce wants you to be at in their writing.

>>11578408
Literally every action you take, thought you have, sound you hear, to every itch you scratch is the product of a previous chain of physical interactions. Like a chain of cause and effect, where the effect of some cause is itself the cause of some effect or rather some series of effects. There are no random elements to reality. Nothing you do is a choice because there is no way for things to be different.

Free will assumes the ability for you to choose your actions, but there is no way for you actions to be any different than they are. So, a being such as god, if we were to take him in his canonical 'bearded man in the sky' form, possessing omniscience and all that, would be able to see and know the choice of every human in advance. There would be no point in judging humans, and free will couldn't be "granted." I'm on a tangent, but I think it's obvious why there's no free will.

>>11577692
i still don't know if this is a meme or what

>>11578336
the way I understand:
>God gave free will to humans
>God knows how the humans are going to use their free will since He's omnipotent
>God rewards/punishes based on your free will

The late Mattia Pascal
before it i used to be edgy and wished to remain completely out of society and social norms, but that book made me realise that i wouldn't like it

>>11577688
Mere Christianity and The Cost of Discipleship

>>11578614
A bold claim. Do you have a single fact to back that up?

>>11581768
How do you know the mind is merely material and is solely governed by material interaction?

>There are no random elements to reality.
Are you sure? Even the materialists do not seem to agree with you, rather they suggest that on a very small scale things are behaving in a probabilistic manner

>>11578336
>>11581803
Isn't the classical christian conception of the matter that it is the sinners who are punishing themselves by drawing away from or cutting themselves off from God?

>>11577981
Can I be your friend?

>>11583306
>How do you know the mind is merely material and is solely governed by material interaction?
Why base any school of thought on things impossible to observe or impossible even to theorise the possibility of being able to observe them?

>>11583367
Supernatural is observable and it's certainly possible to theorise about it. Whether or not these observations are valid or not is obviously a different debate, but it's not quite as cut and dry as that.

>>11583749
But I would posit that every we deem to be supernatural is in fact natural and physical, and that is why we are capable of theorising about it

>A Guide To Rational Living

Pretty much cured both my anxiety and depression with a single read.
Stoicism basically never clicked until I read this.

>>11583306
>How do you know the mind is merely material and is solely governed by material interaction?
Because the mind follows the same cause and effect. I think >>11583367 put it well: If the mind didn't follow the rules of the rest of reality, it wouldn't be possible to base a science around predicting, understanding, or repairing human behavior. Furthermore, even if we were to assume that some super-real element of the mind existed, it wouldn't make any difference.

Let's pretend we're the first thinking being to ever some into existence, and it's time for you to make your first "choice." Do we want to get food or water first? Say we choose water. We chose water perhaps because we saw a pool of it in our periphery. There is no choice, our decision is based on reality. Let's fast forward: we have recently built our first house, and we need to decide what color to paint it. We choose blue because blue is our favorite color. Why would we ever choose red? Red is never a choice because all prior elements to our decision were based on reality.

Okay, how about things like preferences or personality traits? Well, that's harder to find causes for directly, but think about autistic people or identical twins. Autistic people share similar personality traits, such as having very specific interests and a worse understanding of social contexts. Identical twins separated at birth have in the past lived very similar lives, such as similar preferences in women, or similar career paths. This would suggest a level of predictability to people from these groups' members, meaning a level of determinism. I'm no expert in the human mind, but I don't think there's much room in there for random forces to take refuge. If you disagree, I'd much like to hear an argument as to why.

>Are you sure? Even the materialists do not seem to agree with you, rather they suggest that on a very small scale things are behaving in a probabilistic manner
Well, when humans don't understand how things come to be, we like to call it random. A random number generator, for instance, is not random at all; the resultant number is based on a calculation. I'm not saying quantum physics necessarily isn't random, but randomness is a claim that hasn't been proven yet. Even so, even if we were to assume that there was a low scale level of randomness, that wouldn't change free will. If XYZ happens because of some random element, we would still take action ABC. The only other way for that randomness to affect free will is if it interacted in some way with the mind, but we've already gone over that.

To summarize, the only logically possible area for randomness to affect our free will is in our preferences, but even then randomness is less likely than genetics, environmental, social, or physical elements to determine them. EVEN IN THAT CASE, we do not choose our preferences, and so our choices are still commanded by forces other than ourselves.

>>11583844
Is this as a result of you doubting the accounts of supernatural events or that it is logically impossible for supernatural events to occur within the universe?

>>11577688
Daniil Charms

>>11577688
probably
illuminatus by raw&shea
debt by graeber and
the parallax view by zizek

>>11584033
Depends how we're are defining supernatural. I'm saying that everything that has happened within the universe is possible due to the universe being everything that exists, whether those accounts are true or false is separate but those which are true have origin in our universe and in the physical world

>>11583306
Follow up to >>11584011
The point of being the first thinking being is to show that even when the second or third thinking being shows up, there will have at no point been a random choice made by anyone. I hoped that would help eliminate confusion caused by a world full of thinking beings, but I think I made it more confusing.

How about we isolate a single decision. I had eggs this morning because I want to have energy for my day, because I can tolerate the taste, texture, and smell of eggs, because I'm under the impression that eggs are healthy to eat, etc.

What did you have this morning? Why? What elements of that decision were not the result of something else?

>>11580461
No, seriously. If you're going to put it on there be sincere you fag.

>>11581034
how are you so certain that the scientific universals aren't local to this universe and so on?

>>11584306
Can't quite parse this. Are you saying that their might be something beyond this universe that has different fundamentals? But the universe is everything so I don't follow.

>>11584324
the boundary of the university is unknown. it could be infinite or finite. there could be different unknown forces, dimensions, and particles in different spatial places. my point is that, why are you so confident that our fundamental scientific knowledge will always hold up?

>>11584340
You are correct, but if they have an effect then we will be able to observe it, if not now, then someday, and if not ever, then it is still not excuse for the lazy thought solutions of theology to explain something outside of its jurisdiction. If they have no effect then they may as well not exist as far as our reality is concerned, and in a sense they don't, literally they don't exist but in an abstract sense. It isn't about having confidence so much as it is the only thing, the study of things we can observe or if we cannot observe something at least not jumping to something outside of universal logic and outside of everything we have ever known to be true to explain that thing. It makes no sense to do so. Throughout history religious assumptions of faith and supernatural occurrence have been proven wrong through observation of the actual universe, the point being that it is everything that exists, and so all these unexplainable things are extensions of its by definition. I'm not arguing that our understanding of all these things won't continue to evolve and change, but there is simply no room for abstract speculations in the sense of the theological - that is a square peg being forced into a round hole

>>11584170
I think we'll just have to end the discussion here because we seem to both be hitting a brick wall. I think you are using much the same assumptions and appeals to faith that religious people do, and this has been further reinforced by comments such as this
>Throughout history religious assumptions of faith and supernatural occurrence have been proven wrong through observation of the actual universe, the point being that it is everything that exists, and so all these unexplainable things are extensions of its by definition
This suggests that even if I were to provide examples of supernatural occurrences which are not able to explained via natural or physical causes, you will reject them by definition. As such, I can't really conduct any future argument with you in good faith.

>>11577876
/thread, my fellow egoists

>>11584862
But you're missing my point. If something occurs, then it occurs because it is possible for that thing to occur within the structure of the universe. Nothing can occur that cannot occur within our universe (within suggests there is scope for something outside of it when there isn't, but I digress) - the universe is everything and so everything can be explained within its definitions as they are the only ones that exist, things which are not explainable by humans do somehow exist outside of everything that exists, if they occur then they occur because they are capable of occurring without an abstract unknowable step beyond literally everything that exists

>>11584916
*don't

>>11577688
Leftism: Revisted by Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Catholicism by George Brantl
The Spirit of Thomism by Étienne Gilson
Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross
The Gay Science by N
Antichrist by N

>>11577883
lol go read Scheler's Ressentiment

>>11578475
>>11578614
https://www.quora.com/Is-Quantum-theory-deterministic-or-non-deterministic
lel

>>11584941
Ressentiment is probably one of the worst ideas to come out of continental philosophy - load of bollocks. And also has no insight into anything approaching truth

>>11584986
Already made this point, it's a pop-misconception that quantum physics disproves determinism, it is just a further system of interactions more complex than those in classical physics, but interactions nonetheless, still things ultimately determinable. There's no easy way of talking about quantum physics further in terms easily understandable

>>11585010
read the paper champ

>>11584995
it explains a lot; besides, Scheler is against N's characterization of Christian love as ressentiment.

>>11584916
Natural events both occur and have their source in the natural world.

Supernatural events occur in the natural world, but have their source outside of the natural world.

If I were to show you a supernatural event - let's say for example, seeing a ghost - that lacked a sufficiently reasonable alternative explanation according to natural causes, then it would be reasonable to assume that it is a supernatural, rather than a natural event.

However, you assume that it must be a natural event, even if it was in direct opposition to reasonable evidence to the contrary. You have set the parameters for the argument arbitrarily, in a manner that is no different to what you accuse the religious of doing, and therefore, I can't really continue an argument with you because it will lead nowhere.

>>11585017
Hardly a paper. I've no doubt of his qualification but he defines determinism as:
>Determinism means whether the particle tracks are determinable or not.
Which is true in a literal sense but in regards to the larger argument - quantum states are still defined by cause and effect, it's just that the patterns of their interactions are several orders more complex - though perfectly determinable in a theoretical sense. There's a lot of misinformation on this subject.

>>11585067
But everything is explainable within the framework of the universe, which is everything - just because you or I lack the understanding of those mechanisms or see some anomaly in the usual pattern of 'the natural world' (the universe?), that doesn't change the fact that those things happened due to the universe being the way it is

>>11577688

>>11585089
there's the crux between us two
>it's just that the patterns of their interactions are several orders more complex

>>11585106
But everything is explainable within the framework of God's existence, which is everything - just because you or I lack the understanding of His will or see some anomaly in the pattern of His will, that doesn't change the fact that those things happened due to God being the way He is.

If you find this an absurd position, then you can see why I'm hesitant to continue.

>>11577883
> To attempt to make sense of Christian morality is to attempt to make sense of a dream that you only partly remember
I think that's a very interesting and insightful way to think about it tbqph. The rest of your comment is trash.

>>11578614
The universe is verifiably not deterministic.

>>11578336
I would suggest it is one of the more obvious facts about the human condition that we have free will. If then you want to claim that we in fact don't have free will (which I would compare to claiming that we don't have eyesight or that we don't have feelings) you're gonna need to give some pretty robust reasons for it.

>>11585150
I don't find it absurd at all, if this all that you posit and nothing else then I'm happy to agree that they're one and the same - but I assume that is not where this belief ends. I say everything is explainable through the complexity of the universe as it is everything that exists, but I imagine your idea of God expands far further than this into realms of abstraction without basis in a physical reality - thought arguments that degrade to arguments of language

>>11585188
It's a simple question, but why do you choose to make the choices you do? Because of environmental factors outside of your control that have led you to making those choices? Because of basic instincts that override consciousness? Then you have no free will. Your choices are determined by a subconsciousness that you have no insight into or influence over - there is no definable root of each decision

>>11583749
They are the results of delusion, you telling me ghosts are real?

Theology is the study of the unproveable. That's why it has no value

>>11585212
>why do you choose to make the choices you do?
If in asking this question you expect to receive as an answer a description of some causally prior state, object or property that would determine the choice, then you are begging the question.

>Because of environmental factors outside of your control that have led you to making those choices? Because of basic instincts that override consciousness?
Both of those things surely inform my choice, yes.

>there is no definable root of each decision
I can only assume here you are again implicitly demanding a deterministic analysis of this "root". The root of free decisions is the free agent and the free choice he or she makes. There is no deterministic explanation of this rooting of free choice to be given, because, of course, genuine free choice is not determined.

>>11580870
>work for the awnsers
Funny way of saying tricking yourself into believing what you otherwise couldn't. Nothing like some mental gymnastics.

>>11585234
Proofs are for mathematicians.

>>11585239
But if choice is indeterminable then it is surely random? It either has a root or it is random - the idea of 'freedom' as some in between is nebulous and seemingly undefinable

>>11585191
>I don't find it absurd at all, if this all that you posit and nothing else then I'm happy to agree that they're one and the same
You seem to reject this reasoning in subsequent posts though, specifically in relation to the problem of evil.
>but I imagine your idea of God expands far further than this into realms of abstraction without basis in a physical reality - thought arguments that degrade to arguments of language
You'll need to provide some examples, because I don't think of it in those terms.

>>11585226
It was hypothetical.

>>11585234
You just read A.J. Ayer for the first time, I assume?

>>11585252
Yes because the reasoning doesn't expand to a universal conception of morality or evil, and isn't what I was agreeing with - simply with the statement you made in response to mine and that statement alone, which is self-containing. Did you read the rest of my response?

>>11585252
Genuinely never heard of them

>>11585251
>But if choice is indeterminable then it is surely random?
What exactly do you mean here by "random", if not just "indeterminable"? When I imagine a choice as being one made "randomly", I think of someone rolling a dice or flipping a coin to decide between various options. But this kind of choosing is in marked contrast to most choices we make, including the choice to flip a coin or roll a dice in the first place! Perhaps you imagine that, if free choice is indeterminable, it is as if the universe or the laws of nature are flipping the coins or rolling the dice for us when we make all our usual choices. But why think that? Why not think, more straightforwardly, that it is just us, free agents, outside the chess board or the roulette wheel of the laws of nature, choosing as we will?

>the idea of 'freedom' as some in between is nebulous and seemingly undefinable
Well it can be at least defined negatively as "not determined and not random". If this is not good enough for you, then I would suggest that the real problem is not that the notion of freedom is queer or nebulous, but that you have made your mind up never to accept it as a metaphysical possibility.

>>11585317
>What exactly do you mean here by "random", if not just "indeterminable"? When I imagine a choice as being one made "randomly", I think of someone rolling a dice or flipping a coin to decide between various options. But this kind of choosing is in marked contrast to most choices we make, including the choice to flip a coin or roll a dice in the first place! Perhaps you imagine that, if free choice is indeterminable, it is as if the universe or the laws of nature are flipping the coins or rolling the dice for us when we make all our usual choices. But why think that? Why not think, more straightforwardly, that it is just us, free agents, outside the chess board or the roulette wheel of the laws of nature, choosing as we will?
But it's a recurring, regressive argument either way - for us to choose freely we have to be informed by previous experiences that ultimately lead us to make that decision, which means it isn't free at all - the only other option is that it is random.

>Well it can be at least defined negatively as "not determined and not random". If this is not good enough for you, then I would suggest that the real problem is not that the notion of freedom is queer or nebulous, but that you have made your mind up never to accept it as a metaphysical possibility.
But I don't accept that. It is reasonable enough to assert that something either has to have an origin, or else be random, what else is there? I'd rather you define free will by what it is than what it isn't, because the two things you define it as not being are the two things than seem to me to be the only possible scenarios in our decision making - I'm willing to accept otherwise but I'm not certain what your case is unless you have an example of a choice that can't be explained by what I've said above

>>11585239
>The root of free decisions is the free agent and the free choice he or she makes
that "free" choice we make is the result of external data though. We are built through external data. We are born through external data. We are raised through external data. We make decisions through external data.

And that external data was created by other external data, and that external data to the external data created by more external data on and on and on until the very creation of our universe. If we made a simulation (or model) of the birth of everything that was 100% accurate, then everything would turn out exactly the same. Yes, you have the power to make decisions. If that's what you want to call free will, then you are correct. But those decisions are the result of what you've taken out of everything you've already experienced, therefore making free will an illusion. It's not like this changes much, for no one will be able to predict your decisions to perfect accuracy because no one can fully comprehend your experiences without a bias from their own experiences. Really, this free will question doesn't matter at all.

Anyways, my argument relies on that which nothing is truly random, and everything is a pseudorandom. A dice roll isn't random, only pseudorandom. A shuffle isn't random, only pseudorandom. A coincidence isn't random, only pseudorandom.

pseudorandom is a fake random that really follows some sort of pattern, this pattern using other pseudorandom patterns, and that one using others and so forth. Bring this pattern chain far back enough, and you get nothing, which is the start of everything. Anyways, I was bored and this was my blogpost on the butterfly effect and free will.

>>11585361
>for us to choose freely we have to be informed by previous experiences that ultimately lead us to make that decision, which means it isn't free at all
To be informed isn't to be coerced by that which informs us.

>It is reasonable enough to assert that something either has to have an origin, or else be random, what else is there?
Free choices do have origins, and long and complex causal histories, they just aren't deterministic ones.

>I'm willing to accept otherwise but I'm not certain what your case is unless you have an example of a choice that can't be explained by what I've said above
I'm tempted to call your bluff here, and say that since you make free choices all the time, you know exactly what they are and have the most positive understanding of them possible, but something tells me this won't impress you. Here then is another, more positive definition: A choice is free if and only if it was made by an agent who could have chosen otherwise, according to that agent's non-nomologically determined, metaphysically sovereign deliberations. A choice is determined if and only if some prior state of the universe + laws of nature render it such that it couldn't but have been chosen, and a choice is random if and only if it is not determined according to the above definition and is not made by an agent who could have done otherwise according to that agent's non-nomologically determined, metaphysically sovereign deliberations.

Now I get the impression that this definition is smuggling in more and more notions that you will have a basic metaphysical problem with. My diagnosis of that would be not that there is anything elusive or incoherent about these notions, but rather that they are ones that are incompatible with your mechanistic, materialistic worldview, and that you have accepted this worldview so deeply that you refuse to accept anything that cannot be accounted for within it. Apologies for the long reply.

>>11585089
You're dreadfully wrong. Quantum mechanics is fundamentally probabilistic. Talk to me after you've found the harmonic oscillator energy levels with ladder operators and can derive Fermi's golden rule. After that, please derive the SU(N) representations of angular momentum just to get more fluent with matrix manipulations.

Finally, read about Bell's inequality and the photon versions of it and throw in a little of Bohr's papers on complementarity. Bell's inequality is in many ways a destruction of any theory that pairs determinism - your "interactions are more complex" is a more naive hidden-variable theory - and quantum mechanics.

>>11585398
>If we made a simulation (or model) of the birth of everything that was 100% accurate, then everything would turn out exactly the same
That is scientifically inaccurate, due (at the least) to indeterminate quantum behaviour.

>Really, this free will question doesn't matter at all.
Except of course as regards the topic that started this discussion off - the coherence of Christian morality.

I understand your point of view, but I fundamentally reject it. To me, human beings are not the playthings of the universe, to be toyed with either through deterministic laws of nature or random quantum dice-rolls. We are radically outside of the laws of nature in a metaphysical sense, genuinely free in our selves, and thus able to make choices that are not determined by past states of affairs, whatever their nature. I would say my view of things is more intuitive than yours, all things being equal, since it is a profoundly strong intuition of human beings that we do in fact have free will and really could have chosen differently to how we did in fact choose.

>>11585265
>Yes because the reasoning doesn't expand to a universal conception of morality or evil
How so?
>Did you read the rest of my response?
If you mean the one I was responding to, yes. If not, please clarify which one. And could also provide some examples of further abstraction, so I know what you are referring to.

>>11585271
He created a theory for verifying the value of language which is not dissimilar to your reasoning (see Falsification Principle). It's founded on faulty ground, since the principle itself cannot be empirically proven. I would say the same for you; that the standards by which you judge theology or other 'unproveable' fields is also unable to be proven.

>>11585451
It's a good reply. But I dislike the inherent idea I am simply so lost in a view of things that it makes me unable to contemplate your position - I have no bias in terms of accepting free will, I'd quite like to believe in it as true, but I'm yet to hear an argument to convince me that a decision can be made by someone with no external influence, in a cause-vacuum.

Your explanation of free will is still being defined by something that isn't determined or random - can you give me an example of such a choice?

>A choice is free if and only if it was made by an agent who could have chosen otherwise, according to that agent's non-nomologically determined, metaphysically sovereign deliberations.
I have a hard time imagining any choice that this could be true for.

>>11585605
>can you give me an example of such a choice?
Not one that would be illuminating for you, because we would be bringing different interpretations of the choice to bear. How about your choice to continue this discussion rather than close the tab? To me that would be a perfectly ordinary and genuinely free choice, but of course that will be a worthless observation to you, for you will immediately start analysing it in terms of causally deterministic antecedent conditions.

>>11585671
So... you can't give me an example of free will that can't be explained via determinism or entropy? Why would you expect anyone to see your side of things when you can't articulate your belief clearly? I have set mine out with clarity and without any uncertainty, it's not too much to expect the same and if you can't offer that then why would I give you the benefit of the doubt? Perhaps your argument makes sense in your head but I can't know for sure. Your attempt to take a metaphysical high ground in order to justify your opinions to yourself and put down the clear arguments I have presented with nothing more than smugness in lieu of a valid counter doesn't really wash. It was a nice discussion but you've sort of shown your hand now and it's full of jokers

>>11585750
>So... you can't give me an example of free will that can't be explained via determinism or entropy? Why would you expect anyone to see your side of things when you can't articulate your belief clearly?
I don't understand your argument here. Ontological parsimony shouldn't be such an overriding philodophical concern that we should deny all phenomena that can't be explained via a maximally small set of distinct types of principle. We would have a very simply ontology for example if we only believed in ourselves and the sense-data we experience, but I take it you do believe in the existence of other people and an external world. And you believe in those things because in some sense they are obvious and manifest to you. I would say that the same is true for free will. It is a distinct causal category from determinism and random chance, and it is not strictly necessary to explain any particular observable decision, but from introspective experience and intuition we know that it is real. As for articulation of the position, I believe I did a reasonable job of articulating free choice in one of my previous posts:
>>11585451
I didn't mean to imply I was taking the metaphysical high ground. Of course I believe I am correct and you are incorrect, or we would not be having the discussion we are having. And I tried to give an explanation for your difficulty in understanding my position that was consistent with the intuitiveness of my position. But I didn't mean by doing so to be condescending.

>>11585899
But there is nothing intuitive in your position, although you seem intent on dressing it up as such as to facade its flimsiness. You offer no example of a decision made free of determinism and you offer no refute to the idea that what you perceive as free will is simply misinterpretation on your part. There is no decision that you can make that can't be explained via determinism. You say 'we' know it is real through introspective experience, but I have never felt it, and that coupled with your inability to highlight a decision made without external influence leads to the overwhelming conclusion that your are misinterpreting the autonomy of your decision making faculties because want their to be free will, and not because it exists

>>11577836
The Bible didn't change you enough. That list is abysmal.

>>11577883
Pretentious: THE POST

>>11586523
thats wut u get for reading long ass effort shit, just scroll that shit holmes

>>11577691
And definitely not for the better.

Almost became a Muslim

Mien Kampf

M__y Dick

>>11585458
Shut up you dumb redditor. There is no probability anywhere in quantum mechanics. It arises in various interpretations of QM, which are mostly handwaving nonsense.

>>11585458
>>11587412
Fucking brainlet pseuds. The whole lot of you.

t. CERN physicist

>>11585974
So how about this:

But there is nothing intuitive in your position that the external world exists, although you seem intent on dressing it up as such as to facade its flimsiness. You offer no example of an object non-reducible to sense-data and you offer no refutation to the idea that what you perceive as an external object is simply misinterpretation on your part. There is no perception that you can have that can't be explained via sense-data. You say 'we' know it is real through introspective experience, but I have never felt it, and that coupled with your inability to highlight an object seen without the data of the senses leads to the overwhelming conclusion that you are misinterpreting the autonomy of the objects of your experience because you want there to be an external world, and not because it exists.

Is this persuasive?

>>11577688

Bernhard's Correction

>>11587412
This better be bait

>>11587068
Trad threads?

>>11587548
how did it change you?

>>11587559

Well it deeply affected me with a sort of sleight of hand argument about phenomenology and perception of reality--by reading the book, you enact the narrator's entrapment inside Roithamer's thoughts, a cunning stand in for your own state of being permanently trapped inside your own consciousness, never able to transcend your subjectivity.
Like in Roithamer's final mania when he says "You can't actually read a book because you're only reading yourself."

>>11587583

Like in the Wallace quote that's like, "There's so much inside me but to you it's just words"

>>11587487
Literally has nothing to do with things being deterministic or not - subjectivity doesn't prove free will

Nothing, I've read a lot but I'm still the exact same retarded faggot I ever was. Now I'm well and truly equipped to name drop some book no one has ever heard of in social situations.

>>11587556
And also the state of despair, which saturated modern intellectual space. Fucking degeneration. And they want to 'accelerate' it. In this issue, I fully agree with Christian and Islamic eschatology.

>>11577688
The Bible
Confessions
Summa Theologiae
Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell)
Capital
The Selfish Gene
Aristotle complete works
Plato complete works
BGE, Genealogy of Morality, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The Rational Bible: Exodus - God, Slavery, and Freedom
Crime & Punishment
The Federalist Papers

>>11587635
>subjectivity doesn't prove free will
Prove it.

Philosophical Investigations
Simulation and Simculara
Introduction to Plant Molecular Biology
The History of Sexuality Volume 1
Homo Sacer
Double Helix
Propaganda
Rhetoric
Tales of Ex-Apes
Know What You Don't Know
The Case Against Education

>>11587551
He's correct. Probability is a result of measurement errors.
https://youtu.be/p7bzE1E5PMY

Too bad this thread turned into 2 spergs arguing, but Moby dick changed me for the better.

>>11588366
Checked and check't

>>11588379
That's not how it works...

>>11588445
>"No, the burden of proof is on *you*"
Prove the external world exists, prove love exists, prove reason exists, prove modus ponens is valid, prove there are no true contradictions, prove Leibniz's law, prove the world didn't come into existence 5 minutes ago, prove you're not a brain in a vat, prove you're not the only thing that exists, prove inductive reasoning is rational, prove you have experiences, prove you feel pain, prove it is possible to know anything at all, etc, etc, etc.

>>11588460
But why does not being able to prove those things contradict the fact that there is no free will and human cognition is deterministic

>>11588438
>There must be no deviation from the OP
Kill yourself.

>>11588483
It doesn't contradict it, it's just a way to illustrate that not all knowledge is provable outside of the conditions that give rise to it in the first place, and being unable to prove a certain state of affairs to the satisfaction of some tribunal external to your own introspective or phenomenological experience or subjective intuition does not prove that your belief in that state of affairs is not justified. Whether you like it or not, the intuition that human beings have free will, in the sense that they could have done otherwise, is an extremely widely held and deeply held intuition, much like the intuition that there is a difference between functional states and conscious states, or the intuition that morality is not merely a matter of emotional preferences.

>>11577688
Genealogy of morals

>>11588531
>whether you like it or not, the intuition that human beings have free will, in the sense that they could have done otherwise, is an extremely widely held and deeply held intuition
Yes but if no one can give an example of a choice not determined by previous experience then they are mistaken in that belief - there's nothing that causes more blockage in actually addressing these kind of ideas than the argument that 'lots of people believe something so there must be some truth in it' when not one of them can offer an alternative to the deterministic explanation for human thought and will

>>11588944
>Yes but if no one can give an example of a choice not determined by previous experience then they are mistaken in that belief
I don't know what you could mean by "give an example of a choice not determined by previous experience" here that would not be answered by a sentence such as "the choice to reply to this comment".

>the argument that 'lots of people believe something so there must be some truth in it'
That's a strawman of the argument. The belief that consciousness is not just a functional state (to take what I hope is a neutral example) is not of the same intuitive kind to the belief, for example, that the entire Old Testament was written by Moses, which once upon a time was widely believed.

>not one of them can offer an alternative to the deterministic explanation for human thought and will
I also find this puzzling. We've been discussing the metaphysical possibility and justification for believing the alternative to determinism for the last 20 or so hours (assuming you are the same anon).

>>11588983
>that the entire Old Testament was written by Moses
Sorry I meant the entire Torah.

>>11588983
But your choice to reply to this comment is dictated by your previous experiences leading to this moment in a chain of cause and effect and nothing else!

>>11589008
>But your choice to reply to this comment is dictated by your previous experiences leading to this moment in a chain of cause and effect and nothing else
If that was the case then I would be unable to do other than reply to you. But as I think about it now, typing out this comment and reflecting on my upcoming act of clicking on the "post" button, it is clear to be that I am able to do either of the two not-yet-actual acts - clicking on the button or not clicking on it. I can decide which of those two acts to actualise. It is seemingly unthinkable that I couldn't - whatever has up to this point in time transpired in the universe, I am metaphysically above it, so to speak, and can choose whatever I decide to regardless of it.

>>11589063
Nope - that's illusory, ultimately your decision in the moment is dictated by cause and effect and your thoughts don't change this, they are just internal causes and effects, the thoughts generated through by things outside of your control - you can't even control what you think, ultimately, your thoughts control your actions and 'decisions'. That results in you choosing to reply. It is wrong to think about choices as singular moments of thought or clarity in which the decision, actions, and decisions are made in a constant chain of momentum, they are not really separate in the way you seem to think

>>11589092
I understand your point of view, but to me your assertion that my account of free choice is illusory, along with a deterministic analysis of it, is no different to the assertion that the external world is illusory, along with a sense-datum analysis of it, or the assertion that consciousness is illusory, along with a functional role analysis of that, or the assertion that causation is illusory, along with a constant conjunction analysis of that.