My choices are not impulses. They are processing of impulses, which is done by complex feedback loops with respect to my nature. — Agustino

You're just muddying the waters. A freely willed action should be intentional, and in order to do an intentional action you need an intention, which is an impulse (a mental state) that causes the action. But since you can't choose the intention, your intentional action is caused by something you have not chosen.

There is no question of resisting your own self if that's what you mean. There is no self outside your self to resist your self, so the very question is absurd. It literarily makes no sense. — Agustino

That's what I'm saying.

And impulses are external. So yes, the self can absolutely resist those external impulses, whatever they are. — Agustino

Even your own intentions are external impulses? :s

Of course I can't choose my self, because that would imply to be other than my self when choosing. That would be contrary to the whole notion of being a self in the first place, and therefore contrary to even the notion of choosing. You have an incoherent model based on mechanistic assumptions. — Agustino

What is incoherent about my model? It is you who assumes some kind of homunculus self who can resist his own impulses, his own intentions - intentionally!

This analysis is naive because it leaves out of the question your own self. There's nothing in the picture that you can identify with your self at this point, except a homunculus who just sits there and watches as experience flows by. — Agustino

You said it yourself - the impulse is you. I don't claim there is any "homunculus". You are the impulses, including the intentions, that cause your actions. And you can't choose your impulses - you can't choose your self.

Nope, my choice isn't caused by my impulses at all. That's exactly why impulses can be resisted once they are perceived in the first place. — Agustino

You need an impulse in order to resist an impulse. Don't forget that intentions are impulses too. If you want to do an intentional action, you need an intention, which is an impulse that drives an intentional action.

I am created by someone else. Once created I have the FREE CHOICE between A and B. I choose one of them, and therefore end where I end up. — Agustino

Your choice is caused by your impulses and since you can't choose your impulses, your choice is caused by something you have not chosen. In this sense it is not free, see?

An individual's choice is part of the causal chain. The universe is not FATALISTIC. There is a big big difference between determinism and fatalism. The individual isn't destined by absolute necessity to X or Y particular things. — Agustino

The individual is destined by his impulses, which he has not chosen.

So what if I don't create myself? It doesn't follow that once created I don't have free will. — Agustino

What follows is that all your actions are ultimately determined by that which you have not freely willed. So they are a matter of luck.

Well, actually, the individual does have a very large degree of control over his actions. — Agustino

The individual can have control in the sense that his impulses (intentions, desires...) can cause actions that bring him satisfaction. But in the ultimate sense, the individual has no control at all.

:s Maybe that "impulse" is just who I am. I am part of the causal chain afterall. Determinism and free will are not incompatible. — Agustino

Ok but since you don't create yourself, even the actions that are caused by this impulse are ultimately caused by something you have not created. I don't argue against compatibilist free will but against libertarian free will. The concept of libertarian free will, whether articulated or just felt, is the principal driving force of individualism because it ascribes to the individual ultimate control (and responsibility) for his actions.

Riiight, well apart from the nonsense you're speaking with regards to free will, I pretty much agree with everything else about helping the unlucky ones who cannot help themselves as you say. — Agustino

In order to do a supposedly freely willed action, whether physical or mental, you need an impulse or intention to do the action. But you can't freely create that impulse - or even if you can, you need another impulse to create it, etc.

It's not really luck, you just need to be concerned about these things and spend a long time thinking about them and working on them. — Agustino

You need the impulse to be concerned about these things, think about them, work on them, and the ability to successfully carry out and sustain these activities - luck.

Well, if you put it that way, you need to be lucky to even be born :s . — Agustino

Of course. No one creates themselves. Not even God. :)

But now you're exaggerating the notion as if the decisions you take don't play a role at all. — Agustino

You see, it all boils down to the illusion and golden calf of (especially) the Western civilization - libertarian free will. By significantly separating the individual from the rest of reality, we get the illusion that the individual is in some sense ultimately independent and in control of his physical or mental actions. On the other hand, this separation "unleashes" the individual - it enables the individual to be active and creative and thus create wealth. So we need the market system that unleashes individuals but we also need a system of redistribution of wealth in order to help the unlucky ones.

Helping the unlucky ones is a moral imperative that some believe comes from God, but I think it can also be explained by a naturally evolved feeling of empathy. This feeling evolved - that is, was selected for - because it was useful for the survival and reproduction of beings, in that it facilitates social bonds and cooperation and, more generally, the ability of mental integration/synthesis. Without helping the unlucky ones the social system becomes strained and fragmented and eventually even the lucky ones lose.

That's important, but not enough. You have to work smart, not necessarily hard. — Agustino

So you need intelligence or talent - luck. You need the right ideas or insights to occur to you - luck.

Assuming that you have no underlying health problems, then moral education and psychological training can help. Adopting the right mindset can help. Exercise, fitness, etc. All these things. You really have to build a life around it. — Agustino

You need to get the education or training and have the ability to absorb it - luck. You need to have the impulse and ability to adopt the right mindset - luck. You need to have the impulse to exercise and the ability/energy to persevere in it - luck.

In short, you need to be lucky.

However, I will say that the way I spoke about above is a difficult path to walk to become wealthy. The easy way is to get involved in corruption with the government. And you can do it if you don't have moral values, are determined to do it, and put yourself in the right place. Stealing and appropriating from others is always less difficult than creating value yourself. — Agustino

Of course, but I didn't even think about that. Even in an uncorrupted market economy you need to be lucky in order to get wealth. And it is morally not ok for the unlucky to die in the streets while the lucky enjoy lavish lifestyles.

To a certain extent. — Agustino

So what is the most important factor in getting wealth? Willingness to work hard? For that you need to have sufficient mental or physical energy - and how do you create that? Even that seems to be a matter of luck, in the final analysis.

The problem is that much of wealth creation and distribution is based on luck. In order to gain wealth in a market economy you need to have the conditions to provide that for which there is high demand. Conditions such as talent, health, intelligence, and suitable environment. These conditions are largely a matter of luck. If you think it is ok for the unlucky to die of hunger while the lucky have billions you need Jesus.

Speed might have no meaning without a frame of reference, but words do not require a frame of reference to have meaning, you are just making that up. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the theory of relativity, simultaneity has no meaning without a frame of reference, just as speed has no meaning without a frame of reference.

Philosophers as far back as Aristotle, and beyond, spoke of simultaneity without a frame of reference. It's only relativity theory, which insists that simultaneity is meaningless without a frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but whether we talk about simultaneity in the context of relativity theory or in the context of absolute space and time, is part of the meaning of simultaneity.

If you don't see the contradiction in stating that it is a fact that A and B are both simultaneous, and not simultaneous, then I can't help you. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is a statement without meaning, and meaningless statements are neither contradictory nor non-contradictory.

"In the same sense" refers to the meaning of the words of the statement, not the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

But the words have no meaning without the frame of reference, just as speed has no meaning without the frame of reference. Simultaneity and speed have no meaning without the frame of reference. So, it is not a contradiction to say that a car is moving at the speed of 70 miles per hour and simultaneously it is not moving at the speed of 70 miles per hour. It is just a statement without meaning. But it is a contradiction to say that a car is moving at the speed of 70 miles per hour in relation to the Statue of Liberty and simultaneously it is not moving at the speed of 70 miles per hour in relation to the Statue of Liberty. You can formulate genuine contradictions like this, even in the theory of relativity.

If special relativity allows that the meaning of "at the same time" is dependent on the frame of reference, then it circumvents the law of non-contradiction by giving "frame of reference" a higher priority than "non-contradiction". — Metaphysician Undercover

No, the frame of reference is included in the "in the same sense" part of the law of non-contradiction.

But special relativity implies that it is really the case that both X and not-X are true. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, in the context of special relativity it is meaningless to say that X or not-X is true unless you specify the reference frame in relation to which X or not-X applies. It is just as meaningless as saying that an object moves at speed 300 miles per hour without specifying the reference frame in relation to which the speed applies. There is no "real" speed that exists irrespective of a reference frame.

No two objects can ever have the same exact velocity - there are too many variables to manage. Given this, it's obvious that no two objects can ever be in the same frame of reference. — TheMadFool

I see no reason why two objects couldn't have the exact same velocity. Of course, velocity is relative too. Two objects can move at exactly the same velocity in relation to me, that is, in relation to the frame of reference in which I am at rest.

My point is without simultaneity, which I think you agree is impossible, there can't be a law of noncontradiction. — TheMadFool

Then you misunderstand what the law of non-contradiction is. It says that two contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense, not that two contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same absolute time.

Correct is always a judgment carried by a scientific community at a certain period. We have no idea what the science community will say over 1000 years or more. — Hachem

By correct I mean that the theory fits with observation.

Nowadays Physics is still embedded in a view of the universe, and we are still trying to figure out the correct view. There are still people who think that God does not play dice, while others vote for a more probabilistic/random approach. — Hachem

Still, contemporary theories are much more parsimonious than Ptolemy's and they can predict much more than Ptolemy could even imagine. They correctly describe a much larger portion of reality than Ptolemy's theory did.

In the time of the Ancient Greeks, angels were thought to push the planets around, and Ptolemy had no trouble incorporating this belief in his theory... which by the way allowed astronomers to make many correct predictions. — Hachem

The correctness of the predictions of the Ptolemaic geocentric theory followed from the correspondence between the mathematical properties of the theory and the mathematical structure of the universe, not from the assumption of angels. The assumption of angels was not necessary. The correctness of the predictions of Kepler's heliocentric theory, too, followed from the correspondence between the mathematical properties of the theory and the mathematical structure of the universe, but its virtue was that it was much more parsimonious than the geocentric theory - it identified larger regularities in the motion of planets and thus simplified the description.

So two different theories can be correct, within certain limits, but one can be simpler than the other. And then there are theories that are not correct even within those limits.

Your 'in other words' does not follow. Again, a lack of argument, and a missing minor premise. — StreetlightX

Actually, it was a simple equivalence. "Thing does not contradict itself or any other thing" = "thing is non-contradictory".

Granting that one can make any sense of the murky and loaded idea of 'correspondence' — StreetlightX

Correspondence means that if we agree to call some kind of object a square then we will call it a square and not a circle. It is also known as correct naming and correct description.

you've just made a claim about 'statements' - about what we can say of the world. And this is just where contradiction is applicable. — StreetlightX

If you agree that only non-contradictory statements correspond to reality then that's all that matters. But among such correct statements is that every thing is what it is and is not what it is not, and so the thing does not contradict itself or any other thing. In other words, every thing - and therefore reality - is non-contradictory.

I think non-contradiction applies to reality very well because only non-contradictory statements can correspond to reality. In this sense, reality is non-contradictory too.

They give approximately correct predictions, to the limits of our experimental apparatus. — fishfry

And why do some stories give more correct predictions than others?

Newton wasn't correct, nor is Einstein. They get closer and closer to something that may or may not be there. — fishfry

Well, it better be there. Not sure how they could get closer and closer to something that is not there.

In other words, contradiction is not something that could even in principle apply - or not - to things in the world; you 'can't imagine that reality would be absurd' because absurdity is a function of thought, not being. To say that reality can or can't be 'contradictory' is to project onto the world a category that applies only to our thinking about the world. — StreetlightX

If you think there may be balls that are not balls, fine. I will stick with thinking that there are only balls that are balls; for some reason it seems to be a much better strategy in life too.

There are two different things. One is the laws of physics, which are historically contingent works of man. Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, etc. The collected body of physics papers. The stories we tell the freshmen, the stories we tell the grad students, the stories physicists tell each other. — fishfry

But why do some of these stories give correct predictions and others don't?

Again you are claiming that a single inconsistent aspect of the universe [an entirely metaphysical notion] implies denial of the law of identity. — fishfry

Identity of a thing is determined by its properties. If you say that something has and simultaneously does not have the same property you deny the identity of the thing.

Unprovable and evidence-free metaphysical claim. — fishfry

Well, if a ball that is not a ball makes sense to you, I have nothing else to say.

So you agree with my point that we can (under certain circumstances) speak rationally about inconsistency. Which falsifies your claim that there can be no rational discussion if some aspect of the universe is inconsistent. — fishfry

An inconsistent aspect of the universe is nonsense. We can only speak rationally if we don't insist that such an aspect of the universe exists and we rather try to find out what is wrong with our information or speak about something else. And if we abandon the law of non-contradiction completely, we cannot speak rationally about anything.

In physics, a unified field theory (UFT) is a type of field theory that allows all that is usually thought of as fundamental forces and elementary particles to be written in terms of a single field.
There is currently no accepted unified field theory, and thus it remains an open line of research. — fishfry

I still don't see the inconsistency. If the combination of relativity and quantum theory says something like the electron is here and simultaneously the electron is not here then it inconsistently defines a property of the electron and thus the electron's identity. I don't see how such a theory can correspond to reality.

In other words it is perfectly sensible to have rational discussions of the subject of how to handle logical inconsistency. — fishfry

Only to the extent to which you stick to logical consistency and manage to prevent the inconsistent stuff from spreading via the principle of explosion to other parts of your system. Which is what I believe paraconsistent logic tries to do.

how do you know that? — Hachem

Because we observe it. And the physical laws that enable us to make successful predictions and technology also say that the moon moved around the earth long before we observed it.

That it moves around the Earth?

Of course not. The problem is talking about the moon without in someway being there to see it. — Hachem

But even if no one sees the moon or talks about it, the moon is still there and so it has its identity.

I'm afraid I don't see that at all. As an example, suppose that our current physical theories turn out to be "true" about reality. In that case, quantum physics is inconsistent with relativity, but the law of identity still holds. A think is still identical to itself. I just don't follow your logical argument here. — fishfry

Can you formulate the inconsistency between relativity and quantum physics? I just heard that they give infinite results in some situations, which does not correspond to observed reality, but infinities per se don't seem inconsistent.

This I also don't understand. If you mean that if I don't believe in Aristotelian logic that I can't have a rational conversation, that's clearly false. — fishfry

I mean that if you abandon the law of non-contradiction then you indeed can't have any meaningful conversation because there is no difference between what you say and the negation of what you say.

I am afraid your approach leads to a philosophical dead end. Speaking of things as they are without an observer or a mind is a very difficult metaphysical position to take. — Hachem

Do you think there was no moon before any mind observed it?

Would you say that reality is true or would you say that only true statements describe reality? If the latter, then perhaps it's more correct to say that only logically consistent statements describe reality. — Michael

Well, you can say that reality is true. After all, we also say that facts (the ways reality is) are truths, although truth is also often meant specifically as a property of statements. Being consistent can be understood as having an identity, being identical to oneself, and so it is a property of things in general, not just of statements.

What does this even mean? Is this a state of affairs that can obtain in reality? No, but then, that's because it's your description that is absurd. It's an artificial knot you tied with language, nothing more. — StreetlightX

But if such a state of affairs obtained in reality then reality would be absurd too. But I can't imagine that reality would be absurd in this way. Reality can correspond only to logically consistent statements, never to logically inconsistent ones. In this sense, reality itself is logically consistent.

Another knot, linguistically derived: create an absurdity, declare it's impossibility, than say that such a thing cannot be. A closed circle of triviality. — StreetlightX

Yeah, it's pretty trivial that reality is logically consistent.

But this is the wrong question. It's a question of grammar and sense, not 'being' (what 'is'...?). — StreetlightX

If you say that nature is, rather than saying that nature is and simultaneously isn't, or if you say that nature has such and such properties, rather than saying that nature has such and such properties and simultaneously doesn't have these properties, then you are applying the law of noncontradiction to nature.

It makes perfect sense to say that proposition X and proposition ¬X contradict: from this, one can draw conclusions, make inferences, etc. This is just what is means to make sense, to be sensical. No such way of proceeding presents itself when saying that some determinate thing or action or whathaveyou 'contradicts' itself or another thing. — StreetlightX

That's because it would be absurd if a thing or an action contradicted itself. It would mean that the thing or the action is not what it is. That's why I say that there can be no contradiction in reality. There can be contradictions in our descriptions of reality but such descriptions are necessarily false - they cannot correspond to reality because there are no contradictions in reality.

As Raymond Geuss points out, what we mistakenly think of as 'contradictions' in actions (for example) are generally just conflicts: — StreetlightX

I definitely don't confuse contradictions (in the logical sense) with conflicts or clashes of opposite forces or interests. Such conflicts can be perfectly logically consistent. There are conflicts in reality but there are no contradictions.

It is no contradiction to say that Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B, and encountered Lord Y’s cavalry, who were trying to move from point B to point A. — StreetlightX

Right. But it would be a contradiction to say that Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B and simultaneously Lord X’s cavalry were not trying to move from point A to point B. But since there are no contradictions in reality, such a contradictory action cannot happen.