phyllo wrote: This is typical of you in retort mode. I try to explain myself but that's not the reaction you are looking for. Or are demanding.
You don't need to explain yourself yet again. I have read that same explanation dozens of times. I understood it on a previous reading and my memory is not so bad that I forgot it.
You're the objectivist. So there is only one explanation that will suffice. The one that coincides with your own, uh, contempt for me here?
And to demonstrate that I am worthy of this contempt, you insist that you just
know that I did not think through the argument above. How
do you know this? Because had I actually read the argument carefully and thought it through, I would not have reacted as I did.
Again, depending entirely on how someone has come to understand -- given some measure of free will -- the meaning of "ignoring" here. From my frame of mind, determinism subsumes all matter in a future that unfolds only as it ever could have. The multitude of inputs, whether pertaining to me, you, a black box or a cylinder, are all inherently, necessarily embodied in the laws of matter.
We act and we ignore differently from the box and the cylinder. How? In that we consciously "choose" to. But that is only a manifestation of matter having evolved into a human brain that is not yet fully understood by science. There may be an element of actual volition embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions that unfold in our brain matter. And, sure, it may be traced back to one or another God; or to one or another understanding of living matter itself that makes it profoundly -- qualitatively -- different from the mindless matter in the black box and the cylinder.
Okay, you tell us what that is. Demonstrate it to us such that there can be no doubt whatsoever that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another.
phyllo wrote: I don't see how I can demonstrate "that human beings are able to freely opt for one set of behaviors rather than another" when that's not even my point of view. I'm not saying that there is anything "profoundly -- qualitatively -- different".
You don't understand my position even after all these posts.
But my point is that until it is able to be demonstrated that this very exchange is not entirely in sync with the laws of nature, all we are left with
are the assumptions we make about determinism. And, indeed, the assumption that you make is that I do have the capacity to understand your position if only I would exercise my free will and make an actual effort to understand it.
Instead, that you merely believe this to be the case "here and now" becomes all the proof that you and your ilk need.
Thus...
In other words, we are simply to assume that the sequence of choices made by the man in this example, like the sequence of choices made by you to bring it to our attention, "proves" that how you understand all of this is more rational than the way I have come to understand it.
phyllo wrote: No. I'm saying that reducing all human decisions and actions to being "compelled by natural laws" is a lame and ineffective way of describing humans. It's dumbing it down too much.
Again, I have the actual option not to reduce all human decisions down to being "compelled by nature", but my "lame and ineffective" thinking is the reason that I don't.
Really, compelled or not, I get that part.
Logic? It's just common sense that the Stoic's understanding of a functioning human brain was considerbly less than our understanding today.
phyllo wrote: Sure but you don't need to understand the functioning of the human brain if you take a black box approach.
This is simply preposterous to me. Until we come to understand definitively how mindless matter evolved into living matter evolved into conscious matter evolved into self-conscious matter grappling to understand the relationsdhip between "outside the black box" "the black box itself" and "inside the black box", we are always going to be dealing with all of the "unknown unknowns" embedded in questions this big.
And to argue that the gap between the Stoics understanding of the human brain and that which neuroscience understands about it today isn't of fundamental importance is, well, preposterous.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the Stoics being "idiots", and everything to do with the explosion of scientific knowledge we have at our disposal that they did not.
On the other hand, I might be lamely and ineffectually misunderstanding your point again.
If you actually do believe that one can understand human psychology without first having a comprehensive understanding of the human brain -- compelled or not -- I have no illusions about ever changing your mind.
phyllo wrote: You don't need to understand atomic structure, or the existence of existence, in order to build a cathedral in the Middle Ages. You need a good understanding of how stone and wood behave.
As though what you need to understand about building a cathedral is on par with what you would need to know to resolve once and for all whether human beings have freedom or volition or autonomy or will to power or whatever you want to call it.
