And all of this is just to further point out that those who wish to open up the Bible, read a passage, and then comment on what it must mean in a vacuum without referencing the religious doctrine as a whole aren't providing a meaningful analysis of any known religion. — Hanover

Isn't the problem then that people reading it are generally unaware of the history of the words or of the just interpretation, and possibly take it litteraly (especially in the old days and it is the Bible)? How one knows this wasn't done for real back then? Did the cutting off of a hand once mean that money was involved? It's maybe more probable a contemporary interpretation. Like it can mean: "A rib should be cut out of his chest". And why should the woman give money for saving her husband from a cruel attacker? Shouldn't the attacker be given a fine?

Viruses have wills too. The will to enter cells and inject their mRNA into our cells, propagates the little buggers, so their offspring can live. There is no will to kill us, so they can't be blamed. It's this will that propates all material processes. All matter is literally charged to interact. This will translates in interaction. Viruses have been around pretty long and their mode of being apparently pays off.

The will even needs determinism. Without it it can't be determined. Which doesn't make it unfree or free. The will simply is. We are not subject to natural laws like slaves to masters indeed. Only other people can limit its freedom. Master and servant.

How is Deuteronomy 25:12 to be interpreted:

“If two men get into a fight with each other and the wife of the one intervenes to protect her husband from the one striking him and she reaches out her hand and grabs hold of him by his private parts, 12: [you must amputate her hand. You should not feel sorry.]"

Is this advice to be taken taken literally by a true Christian? How is it to be interpreted? Will this not result in a one-way trip to hell, without a stay in the intermediate state of limbo purgatory, if he has taken it seriously and decided to realize the advice after he has seen his wife grabbing the balls of his opponent? What about the poor rescuing woman? Will she go to hell if she is punished already by axing of the sinful hand?

Or is it meant emblematically? What if the man rescues his wife from an assaulting woman by embracing her private parts? Should his hand be cut off? If man and women are treated equal it should.

Therefor everything happens "freely" but without a free will. — Yohan

That's it! There is will only.
I comment determined.

Well like kenosha kid said, it could involve the second law of thermodynamics. I don't really know though. — john27

That would be exactly the same. All global systems show decreasing order, and local increments. That just happens. Is the system determined by this law? Only in the eye of the beholder, though it merely expresses the feeling of not knowing what is gonna happen, to compensate for it.

"Your actions are determined... whatever you might think or do..." Yeah yeah... My foot is determined, to arrive in your... eeehh... ear.

Organisms are programmed by Natural Selection and possess limited information in their heads for which to make decisions with - instinctively. — Harry Hindu

That's the same image as God creating us in his image. Organisms are programmed? Natural Selection being the programmer? What language is used? Are we following a written program?

For the will not to be free, in the academic sense of determism determining free will, you have to know what happens exactly. This is only possible for isolated, pre-meditated, processes, to be left isolated after started. If that evil spirit knows exactly what will happen, he can't participate in what he knows everything about. And his own thoughts he can't predict by definition, as his knowing is part of what he wishes to know about. Only a new and more evil genie, isolated from his twin brother, can predict the thoughts of his evil counterpart.

And now brothers and sisters, let's hold hands, pray, and worship our Divine Creator, an... oops, wrong thread!

Sure, although wouldn't that mean that free will isn't free, to us — john27

If you feel like that, then yes. But where is this principle situated, and how does it determine? Is there some mad Principle Puppeteer directing processes with strings?

Information occupies space — Harry Hindu

Ain't it the matter on which zeroes and ones are formed that occupies space? You can use different stuff to push in a form of ones and zeroes, referring to objects in the world. You can uses tiny rings on a metal grid, or levels of liquid. The matter used in forming information is the occupant in space, not the information itself, which refers to the ones and zeroes, which again represents an object. It depends on what we decide where the patterns of ones and zeroes refer to. A memory with random zeroes and ones will contain a tiny bit less energy than a patterned one. The pattern with highest order, weighing the most, will be just as useless as the random one, contradictory as it may sound.

Occam's razor? — john27

Occam's shaving gell seems more appropriate.

A process unfolding, with or without possible consequences on processes somewhere around it. The fact that these processes are determined doesn't render them "not free". In fact, without being determined, the process can't develop in a way that's necessary for freedom. The very notion of determinism is a subjective feature we project on processes. A process isn't "determined" by a deterministic law. That's how we view it only. The will wouldn't care less, and can be pretty determined in that.

Free will, as we all know, is central to ethics. — Agent Smith

It's the constriction of the will that should be part of ethics. The will is not "determined" by physical processes, it is just part of them, and they are a necessary a priori for the will even to exist.

None of which suggests that failure to obey the principle of least action is free will: indeed, you've just cited examples of its violation that are deterministic. — Kenosha Kid

If I act contrary to the principle, which I do, by every action I perform. My will is nor free, nor tied to determinism or any other abstract principle. The will simply is.

What I meant, can one literally be under the influence of a principle we invented? I think it is the user of the principle projecting his will to power over the ones he projects it to.

Even if it were so, the principle doesn't hold for real processes, maybe by approximation only. Are we approximately subjected to it? The principle is even teleological, as it supposes a final point in spacetime that can't be known at the start, except for isolated systems.

The mosaic is predisposed to distract from the content, as if through centrifugal force. Reviewing is known to relate to the content in the following ways:

* Description for the blind or deaf (for example, enumerating the instruments in a musical piece, or, if there’s a tree in a painting, saying, with style, that there’s a tree)
* Analysis “through the microscope”, that is, features of the mosaic are individually looked at in detail (for example, the rhyming structure of a poem, or the references and historical context of a painting)
* Myopic overviews, mostly in the form of categorizations (for example, categorizing a Beethoven piece as Romantic-era classical music) — thaumasnot

We could give a mosaic of essential features, without being myopic, blind or deaf, or analyzing through a microscope. But who determines what parts of the piece are mosaic parts? Can this be determined objectively, as well as communicated objectively? The work that is conceptually reconstructed has to be looked at in an a priori defined manner. Somehow, your theory reminds me of the scientific approach to reality, where empiricism plays a role.

I will try to come up with a narrative for a painting. The narrative, by definition, has to be spoken or written or spoken. Or can we give a visual narrative of music, and a sound narrative of a painting?

Have you read the Manifesto? — thaumasnot

Not all of it. I'll try to find it.

I'm pretty sure if you fire a human from a trebuchet, they will follow the path given by the principle of least action — Kenosha Kid

But the question is: Is she subject to the principle, or is this so only in the mind uttering the principle? After the launch friction will influence the motion, so the principle is not applicable anymore, as only conservative forces are implied. Even on the Moon, friction is involved, gravitational friction. During flight you can wobble around your center of mass, causing friction, and this motion won't be determined by a minimum action principle.

I posted the song, the album, because the title was appropiate: (re)"Construction time again". How to reconstruct that?

What you mean by medium specific narrative? Stories told about different media used in art, or other traditions? In science there exists logical reconstruction. Are yours and this similar somehow? Both are reconstructions.

"So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will?"

The premise (the given) is false, when it's interpreted and measured along the lines and standard of the academia. So the question becomes:

"So, what’s the answer? Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is a free will?"

For those trying to delimit unwanted action flowing from the will, it's a welcome instrument for realizing their vision of a world free from the eschewed action. With guilt and punishment it forms a powerful trinity for keeping the world free from unwanted thoughts and actions, thereby inevitably preventing the will, thoughts, and actions to be free.

The will, in that case, is submitted to the powers that reign. A power that uses accountability as an instrument to relief itself from the burden of responsibility by shoveling it into the unwilling mind of unwilling slaves it tries to control, giving them a false feeling of responsibility, because in fact it's an attempt to install the desired thoughts and actions without too much effort.

But where "reconstruction" refers to? By the way, the music I listen to:

Construction time again

The principle of least action, applying to inanimate, conservative stuff, determines the unconscious will and action of mindless, conservative being. Progressive creatures with a mindful or conscious will, can sidestep the principle of least resistance and move in a way it wouldn't if they were dead. I could move between two fixed points in total disagreement with and opposition to the Principle. So my will free and only a physical or mental leash can limit my free will.

As a matter of fact, you made me turn on some music! It looks like a soundscape to be discovered. Still... What should an objective conceptual reconstruction look like (I haven't read all your work yet)? Does our mind logically reconstruct somehow? New pattern seems to "click" into existence somehow. What pieces of sound are objective properties?

That's the experiment. — thaumasnot

Sounds exciting. Could we discover elements the artist wasn't aware of?

I don't know what "verticality" or "convexity" mean, represent, or imply with visual art — T Clark

Don't tell me you don't know that in abstract painting most trees stand vertical and their leaves are convex. Same for realistic work. Vertical, up-down linearly, convex, spherical.

That's a nice approach. I think I even use it myself, when listening to music. Beside the emotions and crazy dances I sometimes dance, I discover new pieces of guitar, drum patterns I didn't notice before, bass lines repeating, or whatever. Is that the stuff you write about? Sounds like a discovery tour somehow! Great!

It is hedonistic : we look for a perspective that will provide enjoyment. — thaumasnot

That's shining a nice light! So it's an aid for the beholder. Not throwing in useless context info, but concentrating on the piece "as it is"?

We reconstruct an abstraction of the work (hence "conceptual" reconstructionism) to help the consumer of the content re-focus on the content. Consumption of content tends to be distracted by a million factors (for example, the search for meaning and context), that's where reconstruction comes in. — thaumasnot

I see. That's clear. But how to determine the concepts? Suppose I look at the New York Boogie Woogie painting, by Mondriaan? What would be the concepts? Should I ignore the title? Or the atmosphere in New York?

What's the essence of a piece of music? The decomposition of the soundwaves? Then maybe the most objective way is using Fourier transforms piecewise.

Let’s assume a reconstruction of music starts as follows:

“The music starts with a motif M (0:2 to 0:8)” that gets repeated in the next phrase (0:10 to 0:18).”

The music is “quoted” and a correlation (the repetititon) is noted. What is not objective for you here ? — thaumasnot

It's objective if we both agree to reconstruct the piece in the language of "motives", "contrapoints", or other terms of classical music. Isn't the record itself the best reconstruction?

think it would be more productive if we frame this discussion with a concrete example, as I told Metaphysician Undercover: — thaumasnot

That's exactly what I wanted to propose! :wink:

I wonder how you can reconstruct a work. Reconstructing means pulling a work out of its context and give it a new, seemingly objective new context of apparently objective measures. Isn't that exactly what you do? Every claim to objectivity, is a claim to subjectively assigned values of importance. The same is done in scientific reconstructions. An old theory is put under the microscope of modern day claims of objectivity.

Technology is just material stuff shaped in an artificial way. Nothing mysterious about that. In modern society it is sexy and even a sign that society is intelligent, for how intelligent one must be to create an electron microscope... It's this kind of intelligence we value, base IQ tests on, and is looked after in searching partners even. On school we are taught to think technically, to maintain the devastating order mankind has chosen to follow. It will inevitably lead to its demise. No technology can save us from the devastating effects of technology. Some indigenous folks, most of whom are already whiped out of existence, or at least their way of life, to give way to the rise of technology, know this very well, as they still are in contact with nature. The western way, claiming to have knowledge about nature, by means of physics, chemistry, etc. has indeed knowledge, but is further removed from nature than ever. An artificial knowledge, with an equals artificial technique and technology, reinforcing one another inflationary, thereby destroying the natural knowledge and the nature that knowledge is about. WTF if I don't know how technology works? There is nothing so easy to understand as technology. I'm not impressed by it.

That whole notion of idiocy is just invented to direct life as seems suited to the ones using it.

Of course viruses are alive. They are nast little blobs, though very altruistic in a way: they want new nasty blobs to come into existence, while they could just as well have floated away to relax together on a foreign virus beach. Because of their damned altruism we are stuck with them.

What about... — Bitter Crank

The problem with the radiation SETI tries to use for establishing first contact, is that it's feebleadatious. But their are enough photons left to observe with big ears listening.

Well, now it's effable — PoeticUniverse

The true "nature" of reality will be ineffible always. Only the outside nature can be seen.

You seem to imply that field are space. I'm inclined to the view that fields describe the simultaneous histories of almost pointlike particles. Quantum Field Theory claim that the fields are more fundamental than particles and waves, but I disagree. A particle is a funny thing. Empty space is filled with quantum bubbles, but the virtual particles it describes are still situated on empty space. Simultaneously on different parts of space (or zipping below hidden variables, which would make the hidden variables the substance of space). Some of the virtuality is missing between the plates. The hidden variables are confined, excluding some of their modes of being, reducing pressure.

I'm sure the universe is teeming with life. If it produces structured radiation it should be observable. On a planet around Proxima Centauri 2015 on Earth can be seen. Trump raises to power only now, as seen there. Some creature with a galactic radio can hear his rally talks echoing now... But let's not go political.

Or like my grandmother said, "God keeps us decent, civilized, humble, and submissive, a welcome quality for the tyrant."

Thanks. I find it hard to picture the processes. Fortunately, it doesn't matter whether I understand it or not. — Bitter Crank

Indeed. For some folks it seems to matter though. So if you find yourself in the company of people trying to impress you with their knowledge, tell'em the following story.

Imagine yourself between zillions of tiny shiny metal charged spheroidicals zipping around you with high speed, going right through you effortlessly. There are different kinds of spheroidicals. Tiny tiny ones, the neutrinoids and electronoids (and a tiny tiny tiny part of excitations thereoff) and the tiny protonoid/neutronoid spheroidicals, the nucleoids. Near the beginning of time, their mutual distance is small and their velocity huge. The light in between them is reflected only and the main frequency of the light is seen as gamma light at the start, turning to Röntgen, then ultra-violet, ultramarine, grass green, to misty orange at recombination time. At RT, The metal electrically charged balloids have not enough energy anymore to stay apart and there is a universal clickoid to be "heard" when the nucleoids stick together with electronoids. The releases a thorny spectrum of light, specific for the neutral atomoids that are formed, and this light puts itself atop of the light set free. Light will only rarely scatter again as there are no charged balloids left, only neutral atomoids and neutrinoids.

After the great liberation act during Recombination, the universe looks like an orange mist, in which tiny variations in brightness can be seen, because of the random distribution of the atomoids, which were the only objects present. The light changed color thereafter, because the expansion of the universe increased its wavelength, which seemingly contradicts energy conservation, but on closer observation is a relative effect only. Nowadays the light is radio light, and it was discovered because of a pigeon shitting on a radio telescope.

So the story goes...