In retrospect I might have just submitted it to them privately — Mikie

That’s the crux of the objections to seeking a rule. There is no universal rule to devise to prevent the problem you are having that doesn’t limit speech.

The problem and the solution exists in the specifics, not in the form of the universal rules.

If someone makes a metaphysical claim or a linguistic claim under an original post focused on epistemology, couldn’t the poster claim the same exact problem has arisen as yours? Do we really need to address this with a rule, or shouldn’t we let free debate address these issues, and the wisdom of the moderators judge when things are getting out of hand?

Nietzsche wasn't a metaphysician at all — DifferentiatingEgg

I’m glad you responded with a small move towards a conversation. Although you are still in school teaching me, the student.

It is my claim that Nietzsche was a metaphysician, not Nietzsche’s (which I think you know). So if I addressed that, I would have to tell you what I think, not what Nietzsche thinks.

You don’t ask what I think, but, the quote from Deluze is a metaphysical claim. Mask upon mask is a metaphysic of masking. An epistemology that begs for subjects/objects as much as any other claim about the reality of being human in itself.

My claim of metaphysics is not meant to contradict the complexity of right interpretation, but just admit the presence of the word “right” in this sentence, like Deluze used the words “can only” and “already in possession” - these are absolute-speak words, building metaphysical claims.

Nietzsche didn’t value metaphysics, but he didn’t hide its presence. He just didn’t care. That’s fine. Allowed for other insights to flourish. Was a breath of fresh air in the long history of stuffy monasteries.

I don’t expect you to accept this or really think it’s anything new, or important, that you haven’t already digested and disposed of. “To the flames.” - Hume

And I can see why you assume this Deluze quote helps clarify the difference between us.

The difference between us is that I am not assuming anything about you. Other than you are basically just like me and everyone else - a person. I don’t know you. Other than you think you know Nietzsche and think you know me.

I agree you know Nietzsche. I disagree that refuting what I am saying is helping you bring that across.

you made him sound like a oxymoron of hypocrisy — DifferentiatingEgg

I know. You don’t understand what I am saying. I am the oxymoron - I know and love Nietzsche and Christ. You won’t allow that to be the case.

I see some contradictions in Nietzsche, but they are not my focus, just the admission that he is just another jackass philosopher, like Socrates and you and me. The wisdom and the error is not lost on me (can’t tell about you).

There’s a question - is there anywhere in Nietzsche where you think he was talking out his ass? Or is he more like Jesus to you, the way and the truth incarnate? If that question isn’t to assuming.

Nietzsche values in Beauty and Good simply don't match your own hence you don't understand Nietzsche's values of Beauty and Good...

You see him through your own mask...

You have yet to go beyond your reification of Nietzsche... — DifferentiatingEgg

Well you have yet to admit your assumptions about me. Your reification of Christians perhaps?

Do you have any masks?? Don’t you see Mietsche through your own masks? Or are you the reincarnation of Buddha?

If you say you have no masks, you’re blind or a liar; if yes, then what is the point of focusing only on mine? We both have masks - such is the shitty condition of life. Let’s tear them down together instead mocking the pimples on each other’s masks.

I certainly have masks. Do you have any reifications?

How do you know my values? Maybe you don’t know what a Christian really is. In my view, a Christian is NOT 99.99 percent of those who call themselves Christians, including myself, so how do you know what my values or sense of beauty or good is?

I’ll give you a hint - you don’t. You simply don’t. I haven’t said anything about it, and no interpretation of some ideology that you might have can summarize anyone, let alone my wonderful self.

You haven’t touched the surface of this mask, let alone seen underneath. Try something else.

Talk about Nietzsche or Deluze if you want. Ask me some questions about me if you want. But the conclusions of yours about me are seeming like some sort of mechanism or medium for you to engage here. You need a foil to defeat to make a positive contribution. So tedious.

What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some times in order to improve the world. — fdrake

This is an interesting conversation, providing a different way into morality.

If I put the pieces on the table separately:

1. State of affairs in need of improvement
2. Same state of affairs includes the requirement of Superogatory acts to bring improvement.
3. An agent of change
4. Another agent who creates the state of requiring the superogatory act occur at all (the gun to the head).
5. You don’t need 4. to be another agent if instead it is an ideology, in which case the agency behind the superogatory act is the agent of change in 3 abandoning their own sense of justice and rightness in order to get along and be practical.

Does this track?

The way I see it all, it all collapses into 3., the agent, the only location where one can find the monstrous or the superogatory or the obligatory or the permissive.

We have to allow ourselves remain slaves. We have to give our consent to an ideology. Whether an act is obligatory or permitted, by the time one physically acts, one has finished with the deliberation or assent of the state of affairs and instead, acts, inserting oneself into the state of affairs. Removing oneself as judge and creating the thing to be judged.

In the end, all deliberate acts, even most coerced acts (though not all so effective can the coercion be), only become an act, an object in the world, through consent.

There is no one or no where else besides the actor to seek full responsibility for most acts. This is of course complicated and still belongs on a continuum with a free fully responsible act, like a creator God might act, on one side, and a reflexive autonomic act on the other side, like a leaf turning toward the sun, a gasp for breath. Coerced acts, permitted acts, obligatory acts and superogatory acts are all mixtures of free and determined forces.

If I want to put a box on the table and it is on the floor, I have to walk to the box, bend at the waist, grasp, rise and place the box, hoping or assuming the table can support it and the floor will support me. I have no choice but to take these steps.

If I want to save my family from the Nazi’s, or from their sinful tendencies, I might have to step in front of a bullet, or hang on a cross to death.

These are all just acts, and like every act, the requirements are built into the nature of the things.

The person who decides to put the box on the table and the person who decides to step in front of the bullet may have both equally simply made a fully free, deliberated and responsible choice. Or they may be coerced.

If there is a gun to one’s head forcing the box be put on the table, or a gun to one’s head and family forcing you to face the Nazi gun to the chest and family, we are simply complicating the deliberation that might result in a free responsible act. We haven’t recharacterized what a superagotory act is.

This is hard for me to say.

I of course agree that any coercive means used to cause another to act, when the coercive means itself is unlawful (like a gun to the head) and/or the act to be coerced is unlawful (execute that innocent person or I’ll kill your family), is monstrous.

But I disagree that an ideology can take the place of the person holding the gun to anyone’s head. That is the whole point of morality - our acts are ours. And moral acts only arise between personal agents. We get to hold the gun to our own heads, and in the moment we actually stand up to move the box, or step out in front of the bullet, all other agents are supplanted, we seize all the power and focus it on our efforts at enacting.

This is why I think it was Buber, who talked about how the Nazi’s and their concentration camps couldn’t take away the only freedoms that matter. This is why Socrates willingly drank the hemlock.

I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones — fdrake

So if we apply this to a religion that threatens with hell, or that threatens non-religious people, I would agree that God holding the gun of hell to my head would never bring me to love him or know much more than he’s like a Nazi, or that people who judge and condemn others using their religion as lawgiver, ideology setter, are no better.

I don’t believe God is looking forward to judging us - we shoot ourselves in the foot and demand he pass judgment. So all of the talk of hell and punishment and eternal fire - these are of our own making, our own free will, and more like the physics of being a personal agent in this creation. The only coercion any and every religion and religious person should use is “trust God.”

Maybe we agree, and there is just a less significant difference regarding the definition of and role of ideology in moral action.

There is harmony in the physical change. This means that the change must occur at a proper time. — MoK

I would agree that there is conservation of energy/matter, but that empirical observation is not proven beyond doubt (see QM).

But there is no reason to say “the change must occur at a proper time.” This is the crux of your argument, and you have not demonstrated some proper time need exist at all. You just keep saying it as if it’s obvious, and quite the opposite, it seems false.

What, exactly, do you imagine is subject to change?
— tim wood
Physical. — MoK

Tim asked “what”. The question seeks a noun, a quantifiable entity one might point at. You answered with an adjective, like “weak” or “evasive”.

If you want me to get into the nitty gritty of it all — DifferentiatingEgg

Why would I want that from you? Why would I think you had anything to say about Nietzsche that I didn’t already know?

So hard no.

It’s freedom and God’s power, like God’s will through us, like a Will to God’s power and glory…but again, enough with the fables.
— Fire Ologist

There you go again, refusing to interpret his complexity — DifferentiatingEgg

I wasn’t “interpreting his complexity” in that statement.

You are definitely subject to your own mask, and it is obstructing your view of what I said.

You sound like a religious zealot for Nietzsche now. Really kind of weird to me when people who basically agree on something won’t admit that.

I would think it would be interesting to you to wonder, how could someone who knows and loves Nietzsche also claim to know and love Jesus as God? But instead, you’ve got me all figured out and your answer is “he doesn’t understand Nietzsche. Or Jesus.” No curiosity, or self-awareness of the fact that you have no idea who I am or how far this could go.

Are you a musician? I mean a real musician? I am.

Have you truly lived the Dionysian? Experienced the ecstatic intoxication, the undertow, that drives as much as it inspires the willing to drive?

Notice, my only characterization of your words has been “insightful”.

To be honest, you are the caricature of person who truly understands Nietzsche - and there are a lot of you.

I have no idea how deeply you understand Nietzsche, nor do I really care anymore.

I just point that out because you are missing out. I’m trying to find something new here in these exchanges. Sort of the point of communication, if exchanging information. You aren’t. You already know all about me and are just hinting at how much I am missing, as if there was something wrong, or dare I say, immoral, about thinking not-Nietzsche was Nietzsche. Who gives a shit what you think you know?? I don’t anymore.

I gave you an opportunity (many opportunities) to show some respect. You blew it, for sake of your own aggrandized self-importance. You don’t need my respect. Happy for you, but it’s a shitty way to engage with others - why do you bother???

If I was you, from what I can tell about you, I wouldn’t respond. (I would actually apologize, but that’s just because I actually respect others as I respect myself.). But then, I wouldn’t have posted your very first response either.

And you suck at Christianity. Just don’t get it at all.

Can it count as a doer of evil if it isn’t a human? — fdrake

No, and that is an important fulcrum for all ethics. An evil ideology is only as evil as the acts and the actors that support that ideology.

I believe this is a false question, while an ideology isn’t an agent, neither are political rules or laws, and we judge their moral value by the acts which they engender. A law which enables hiring discrimination will be considered unjust to the extent it allows people to act in accordance with its principles. — fdrake

I think it’s a good question because “we judge their moral value by the acts.”

A system of belief functioning as a gun to everyone’s head, compelling them to give all of their worldly possessions away, is monstrous in the same manner as any particular threat that functions the same way. — fdrake

I give us actors more credit. An ideology to the head is a powerful thing, but then, a gun would still overpower most people to betray that same ideology, most people, that is, who would succumb to an ideology in the first place.

And the fact that other people might profess their ideology despite some threatening to shoot them in their head shows both the greater power of ideology, and/ or the greater power of the free agent. It is the free agent that is compelling oneself that is the greatest power and really the first instance of something to judge morally.

And on the other hand, an ideology can be seen all the way through without compelling any action besides criticism.

if one sacrifices one’s moral imagination against systemic injustice on the altar of practicality, one exculpates all evils. But if one believes that we are required not to forsake it, one believes in an ideology that requires the supererogatory of humans, and is thus monstrous. — fdrake

Damned if we do for sacrificial practicality, and damned if we do for non-sacrificial ideology.

We face the choice between allowing devilry or requiring the angelic, and humanity falls off this tightrope of right action either way. — fdrake

Right, but you don’t see there are other ways? Can’t there be ideologies that promote freedom, without any coercion? Maybe that’s not an ideology anymore, if it leaves space for free choice? So then, is it possible to live ideology-free?

let me know and I'll take you to school — DifferentiatingEgg

what did I win? — DifferentiatingEgg

Teacher’s Pet award?

Look, you say lots of insightful things. I don’t really want to go for awards either.

If you don’t think I sound like I know Nietzsche, I don’t know why, but we both know it doesn’t matter.

Nothing positive you’ve said about him or quoted contradicts what I think. Maybe you don’t understand me when I tell you what I think he means, and maybe that’s my fault. But I don’t see the point of battling wits in internet Nietzsche camp.

You said a lot of things I would say when talking about Nietzsche, raising the war of opposing forces, and amor fati. We haven’t mentioned slave morality which is a key criticism of Christianity and driver of any morality and democracy and bourgeois values; there’s the fulcrum of resentment that sprouts our decadence; we haven’t talked about the will to truth as the building of a facade (the Apollonian) while at the same time Nietzsche was a seeker of truth, always. Much tension to hold in hand when attempting to look for Nietzsche’s meaning. We haven’t touched on instinct and the Dionysian, which is another conversation again.

And there’s so much more. And every line, quotable and enjoyable to read.

I might just suck as a writer - how do you know from these few posts what I know of anything to be so bold out of the gate jump and offer to school me?

That said, I played along and begged for more, so don’t think I’m judging you. DifferentiationEgg jumps in - Battle of wits it is!

I can tell you love Nietzsche too.

Like I said, he always makes my top five on any list of who you need to know if you are bent on the whole history of philosophy, regardless of what Nietzsche thinks about bending over other people’s words…

And the quote I mentioned before wasn’t from Twilight, it was from Beyond Good and Evil. It was 164: “Jesus said to his Jews, ‘The law was for servants; love God as I love him, as his son. What are morals to us sons of God?’” I can’t find it in the Bible right now but I believe it’s there similarly to how Nietzsche quoted. It’s a good quote for the gist you are getting at (acceptance of all deeds/all of us in the kingdom of heaven according to Jesus). But I’d argue none of that happens until one has overcome tendencies towards bad faith and inauthenticity, etc..), that I agree with, about Nietzsche, and personally, about what Jesus wanted us to know as well. Which is why I don’t agree with Christianity dying on the cross - Christ is at least as alive as Nietzsche remains, as we keep looking to his books for quotes.

And Nietzsche was wrong about a lot of what he thought being Christ-like means for the Christian. It’s freedom and God’s power, like God’s will through us, like a Will to God’s power and glory…but again, enough with the fables.

He was too harsh on Kant, on Socrates, and so many others too.

I’m telling you, Nietzsche was high priest of a new religion with Zarathustra as prophet, and the all-too-human as his devil. All for effect - so we’d keep reading his truth, his tragic, awe-full, sense of things.

And I’m sure Jesus loves Nietzsche to save him from “nothing happened” and “God is dead” anyway. That’s my heaven - Nietzsche saved as well as the rest.

This came close to a conversation we might both enjoy, neither of us doing much to help the other one enjoy it. Maybe it’s just the way philosophers are - at odds with everyone else, like we are at odds with our own experience.

Should we go back to respecting each other yet, or am I still competing for some more equal participation than a student would have in some teacher’s class?

First of all, you are an excellent writer.

To clarify this distinction, consider the act of looking out a window. Naturalism concerns itself with what you can see outside: the objects, events, and phenomena unfolding in the world. It aims to describe these with precision and detachment, focusing solely on their objective characteristics. Phenomenology, by contrast, is like studying the act of looking itself: the awareness of the scene, the structures of perception, and the way the world is disclosed to you as a subject. — Wayfarer

I have a tiny idea you might find useful. You look out the window and Naturalism focuses on the “out there”. Phenomenology can focus on the glass itself, which represents the subject, and is simultaneously colored by the “out there” as it vaguely reflects your own face on the inside of the window pane - the subjective imposed on the objective, in one simultaneous view.

I don’t know. It’s where I thought you were going when you said consider the act of looking out a window. Tiny idea thought you might make use of.

I thought you were going to go to the part of the Bible that Nietzsche quotes in Twilight, something like: “what need is there of laws to sons of God.”

I still love Nietzsche, even though you don’t think I know him.

Notice that even those who set aside these laws are still going to be in the Kingdom of Heaven? — DifferentiatingEgg

I think the point is that setting aside the laws, for we who subjected ourselves to the laws, is bad. Maybe we all have a get out of jail free card because of Jesus, but, for me personally, there is still work for me to do (like the acts, not just faith, that Nietzsche spoke of in your prior quote from the Antichrist). No one can say what “least in the kingdom of heaven” really means, so I personally do not take this quote to mean the laws don’t matter, nor would I “teach others accordingly.”

The laws won’t matter once they are fulfilled - that’s when there is nothing left to “repress” or “exercise” as you put it.

“Jesus loved even those who would kill him. He did not divorce himself from even his greatest negations...”

But he said on the cross to “forgive them father.” Yes, you are right about God’s love and acceptance of us as children, but he rejects so many of the things we do, for which we need to be forgiven to become his friends. “I tell you these things not as slaves, but as friends.”

He wants us to take responsibility, and offer our lives we are now responsible for back to him, so he can return them in heaven.

We’ve morphed into theology. You can win there too if it has to be a competition.

You skipped all the good parts. Like I am doing with Nietzsche.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Turn the other cheek. Not my will, but thine be done.”

Nietzsche admired that man?

only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian — Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 39

Spot on wisdom.

But it is a life we each can live.

The “Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the “Gospels” was the very reverse of  what he had lived: “bad tidings,” — Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 39

Unless Christ actually rose from the dead and remains present on earth in the Church. Nietzsche didn’t think so.

And according to the God stories... Jesus was sent to Earth by God to save humanity from the laws of God presented by Moses. — DifferentiatingEgg

Not the case, according to the stories. “I am here to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. Every jot and tittle.”

But enough with the fables.

Overcoming isn't about denial of weakness... its about accepting its there — DifferentiatingEgg

Spot on wisdom.

accepting it as a part of you that you cannot simply call "Evil" and exercise it from human existence... — DifferentiatingEgg

Call weakness whatever euphemism you want - the point is there is an exercising that is essential to becoming a great man. Nietzsche and Christ said that, and you just did.

See, the thing is, Nietzsche was right that the vast majority of so-called “Christians” are not at all like Christ. But, because he wouldn’t rely on other men (perfectly reasonable), he threw out the God Jesus with the bath water, and minimized how a free man would respond to seeing the risen Jesus, as if only delusion and projection and wish fulfillment could explain it, despite his own admiration for the man Jesus, the liar who claimed to be God before he was killed for nothing but a fable.

1.Physical however is not aware of the passage of time.
2.Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause the physical in the state of S2.
3.Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot cause the physical in the state of S2.
4.Therefore, the change is not possible in physical.
5.Therefore, physical cannot be the cause of its own change. — MoK

1. I have to interpret what you mean by “physical is not aware” because that’s not normal English. I assume you are trying to note that rocks are not conscious. I can accept that.

2. Therefore, [physical things] in…S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause…S2.
I can accept that, even though some physical things (like human beings) could know.

3. Therefore, the physical in S1 cannot cause S2.

There is no necessity that anything about effects, like S2, be previously known by S1 in order to come to be.

That is what you need to argue before you get to 3.

I have no suggestions for you on how to do this. You are grappling with the appearance of cause and effect in nature, and the appearance that cause and effect is only a form of thought (a knowing agent). Hume showed there is no necessity in nature between cause and effect, and Kant showed we have to think in terms of cause and effect in order to think about change. Maybe they were both misinformed. But your argument doesn’t even show any recognition of these observations which have been noteworthy in history before your argument. Aristotle used potential and actual to help describe the coming to be of changes from S1 to S2. Your argument doesn’t address such things either.

Bottom line, I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you want to reword things and explain them more precisely, I can’t move past number 3. The word “therefore” in number 3 refers back to nothing that would necessitate a “therefore” statement. So I need not address anything further.

But by 5, you introduce “its own change”. Where did “its own” come from? Does “its own” belong with S2 (the now changed state), or with S1? Or both? And if the physical cannot know, can the physical have an “its own”?

In 4, you seem to be saying, like Parmenides, that physical change is not possible. Are you arguing that change doesn’t happen, or that change in physical things only happens because of influences of non-physical things? I think the latter - so you need to reframe 4, or else your conclusion ends up being that change in physical things is not possible, but change in physical things is possible.

But you need to work on 3 and see if there is a way to get beyond it to 4 or later.

I’m trying to show you that I’m taking this seriously and offering specifics that I think need further work. But generally, I don’t think this will be workable.

Dude, you're still a novice — DifferentiatingEgg

Admittedly so. I approach Nietzsche as I approach all philosophy, with gaiety. Screw any deeper understanding of a mankind who has no progress to speak of since Cane and Abel first debated out their solutions.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented the deeper understanding of Nietzsche… One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary…and when it is done…nothing happened.

Look dude, if you come out of the gate from such a lofty perch of wisdom about Nietzsche, you win. I don’t mean to blaspheme his image. Thanks for offering to take me to school but my blissful love of the Nietzsche I know, as just another dude who contradicted himself, and had weaknesses, as much as all the rest, serves me fine. His works are full of insight and wisdom, and his bullshit detector about academia, the middle class, culture, some psychology, and truth, was spot-on.

he flat out tells you how he admires Christ. — DifferentiatingEgg

And I would call Christ the best example of the overman. And he was right that we should each find our own Gods - that’s exactly the kind of unique relationship Christ called people to seek - except I don’t see where Nietzsche showed he ever found a God.

But does Nietzsche admire the Christ who was authentically God, so the story goes, but who became a slave instead? Does he admire how Christ repeatedly lived not according to his own will but instead the will of his Father? Unto the self-sacrifice, self-denial, of death? All for the sake of love, and a new life? Does he admire pity, and charity, and humility, and think it courageous to ask for forgiveness of sins, or to forgive others?

to accept all men — DifferentiatingEgg

God doesn’t accept all men, he loves each one so much he would hang on a cross to death for each one. For Nietzsche.

Christianity (which is synonymous with Christ in the true Christian, the saint) doesn’t call us to be nihilistic rejectors of this life (Nietzsche was wrong), but to participate in the fulfillment of its promises. There’s work to be embraced and things about ourselves to overcome (Nietzsche was right), things of our own making, requiring our own un-making, or better, our own re-making. We aren’t here to repress our base instincts, but to build our own new instincts. We don’t refrain from murder despite wanting to murder; we teach ourselves how we don’t want to murder, and to refrain from nothing.

But this is a digression, one that a smart man like Nietzsche should have figured out, but was too proud of his freedom and his discoveries about human nature to ponder.

Napoleon exemplified a great man? He was just another asshole, mostly like the rest of us. When Napoleon was done, nothing happened (Nietzsche should have stopped the analysis there), other than further lost ground maybe.

The interchangeability of Energy and Matter are not magic, — Gnomon

I have no issue seeing that.

You said energy is a concept. So then matter is energy and therefore matter is a concept.

So is Whitehead interchangeable with Berkeley?

MoK,

You have a captive audience.

We disagree that your arguments work.

You can either judge we are all too simple-minded to comprehend you (which by the quality of the responses would be foolish of you - we're clearly not simple minded), or you should reframe and/or revise your arguments.

My argument clearly shows that physicalism is false therefore one has to endorse substance dualism which explains reality well. — MoK

You haven't clearly shown anything yet to us. That should give you pause, and send you back to the drawing board.

fdrake gave you a lot of content to assist with a revision.

Seems you are trying to say that change can't occur if only physical things exist.

The point you are trying to make can't be so simple as your one paragraph OP, but aside from that, your one paragraph OP is not a valid argument. Work on it.

Physicalism is false like it or not because I have several arguments against it. — MoK

Make those arguments again. Revise them. Define terms more carefully and clearly for us.

Also energy is very much real and physical, not just a concept. I wouldn’t take anything they say on QM seriously since they don’t know how any of it works. — Darkneos

Though they are wrong that Whitehead was an idealist, even the wiki page says as much. It’s more like panpsychism because he emphasizes experience. — Darkneos

Thanks for the time savers. That's what seems the case here - confusion mounting on confusion.

The bottom line for me, just like Descartes, Whitehead, (maybe Aristotle, maybe Plato), Leibniz and Spinoza and so many others have to rig in God to stop the inquiry or finish the third act of their story, QM is being used as a similar tool in attempt to ground out the confusion.

If the conclusion being sought is "All is process; nothing is substance/identifiable thing" then there is no need to understand QM or God in order to stop the inquiry. If all is process, becoming, change, then everything else we say is bullshit (which is why anti-scientism is entertained).

People (possibly Whitehead) are taking one confused and incomplete picture, process philosophy, and using another confusing theory from physics, QM, to say some third confusing thing about substance, about what is and what we can know about it. But God and QM are merely more objects in themselves which have remained unaccounted for to any satisfaction in all of history - why should we think the picture of QM, like some picture of God, would clarify the picture of knowing the world (or not knowing the world, which we already didn't know).

I agree that Process alone, with no Substantial change, would be meaningless. But that's not what Whitehead, or Quantum Physics, was saying. — Gnomon

I am going back and looking at some more Whitehead so I might be better able to talk the whitehead talk here.

But I will admit, my general approach to all of my posts is to put things into my own words. The way I see it, the same elephant is always in the room - me - and what I believe I know, and what I can say about it. So if I say “this is what Whitehead said” and do anything besides quote him, I am only and always saying “this is what I think.” So I just skip over the middle part and say what I think. (It annoys a lot of folks who want to talk about what someone else thinks/meant/said. When I’m talking with someone, I’m really only interested in what they think, and what I think, and what we can agree on, and what we don’t understand about each other’s thoughts. Basically, since Whitehead isn’t here, between us, getting to the bottom of what he was saying is not going to happen. We will only get to the bottom of what we think and say about it. Whitehead has become the prop upon which we base a discussion of what we think.

That said, we can quote people, and take their words at face value, so I’m looking at Whitehead again to see if it helps me say what I mean here.

1. Yet both matter and energy are variations of the same thing. — Gnomon

3. Energy is a Concept, not a Thing :
Yes, "energy" is considered a concept, meaning it's an abstract idea that describes the capacity to do work, and is not a physical object itself, but rather a property of matter that can be transferred and transformed into different forms like heat, light, or motion; it's a fundamental principle in physics used to explain — Gnomon

These two points, both of which are interesting and worthy of more exploration, are either contradictory, or point to something magical/supernatural in the universe. If matter converts to energy and energy converts to matter (1), and energy is a concept (3), then matter converts to concept and concepts convert to matter. This needs more investigation before I could accept both. Let’s see where it goes:

reality is made up of processes, not material objects. Whitehead's philosophy views the world as a web of interrelated processes, rather than a collection of independent material objects. — Gnomon

Processes involve matter interacting through energy, or energy moving through matter, so how can we ignore material objects if we are referencing processes? This doesn’t help me yet.

I need to read more Whitehead here if I am to keep up with you guys.

the physical does not experience the change in time therefore it cannot know the proper time, t2, to which the causation is due to. — MoK

So you are assuming “the experience the change in time” is both not physical, and is necessary to cause changes in the physical.

What causes changes in time in the first place?

And why does a physical thing need to “know the proper time” to facilitate change?

Lots of holes noted by others here.

Substance dualism is not proven yet.

I’m not interested in debating climate deniers who pretend to be doing this. — Mikie

Cool.

So is this an argument against process philosophy? — Darkneos

If someone could concisely define “process philosophy” and show it to be essentially (yes essentially, which is my first point here) different than “philosophy”, I have a feeling I would argue against them having defined anything clearly at all, so there would not yet be something to argue against.

If someone thought advocating process philosophy meant motion and change refute all permanence and refute all philosophies containing anything fixed, such as “truth” or “essence” or “knowledge” or “objective meaning”, I would not argue with them. I would say “I disagree” and ask them how can they possibly know what to say in response to that, when what I am saying now will be consumed by process before it reaches their ears let alone is “understood” in order to prompt an appropriate response? So instead of arguing to refute them, I would ask them to speak, and thereby prompt them to see if they would refute themselves by showing my essential wrongness in disagreeing with them.

But because of the ubiquity of change and process, the metaphysical and ontological reality of motion, my ultimate point is not that process philosophy is wrong and needs to be argued against. It is merely incomplete, and does not account for enough to satisfy any honest question.

Process reveals essentially different things as much as the essentially different things reveal process. There is no prior or post between them. One is not actual where the other is illusion.

So, no, I’m not trying to argue against process philosophy. I’m saying, like Heraclitus said, “the barley-drink stands, only while stirring.” I’m saying there is no need to speak of process (nor is there an ability to do so) if process is all there is to say. There’s more, or if not, there is nothing more to say.

But policing truth deniers and enforcing banning and deletions of ideas,
— Fire Ologist

I’m not advocating that. — Mikie

Ok good. So this should be a moment of agreement where we can continue a conversation. We both basically seem to think the same thing: policing and banning and deletions are not to be advocated for the sake of staying on topic.

There is such a thing as staying on topic. The topic isn’t to debate whether climate change is happening. That should be a separate thread. Just as a thread about evolution shouldn’t include debates about creationism. — Mikie

I agree that a thread about X shouldn’t be spammed with discussions about Z or Q, and I happen to agree that creationism is theology whereas evolution is empirical science.

But climate change is empirical science so it is full of fact gathering that must be evaluated, analysis that begs further development, conclusions subject to logical scrutiny, hypotheses that prompt the whole process of fact gathering, analysis and conclusion again…. To say a hint of distrust of the soundness of a conclusion, or the counter example to some fact means the person has gone off topic - seems weak to me.

I feel your pain - I spend most of my time on the forum restating what I already said because people are taking it in the wrong direction, or just misinterpreting me.

But, I think, we have to remain willing to steer the conversations where we think they should go and cannot make a rule that would be able to be applied in any just, equitable, functional manner to keep conversations from veering off topic. People make metaphysical points all of the time here and others only want to talk about language and logic in refutation of the metaphysics. There is no rule to prevent this.

People say “”the black cat is on the red mat” as a basis for an optics conversation, or a physics conversation, or an epistemological conversation, or a metaphysical conversation, or an ontological conversation, or as an example for a linguistic conversation. If I want to stay epistemological about it, great, but I can’t imagine a rule that would help steer people away from saying something about optics or metaphysics or linguistics.

Next time a thread is started on Kant, I’ll start talking about Donald Trump. How’s that sound? — Mikie

Do you really think that is what I meant? I know my thoughts were subject to the extreme interpretation that I am advocating for no rules at all. I’m not.

But what is the rule you want? How would you frame the specific words of the rule?

A rule for this issue is at best “stay on topic, and don’t be an asshole.” And I give the moderators full discretion at determining what is beyond the limits of “on topic” and who is being “an asshole.” That’s not up to me because it’s not my forum, and this vague rule gives me an opportunity to speak my mind despite anything anyone else says, and I don’t want that to change. So we don’t need any more rules.

If you post about X, and someone goes utterly off topic and carries the whole post in another direction, I’d say, tell the mods and let them delete or not delete as they see fit, and if it’s not enough, try to start your post again. Reword it and try again. I’m sure some sort of targeted trolling or spamming or ignorance would be addressed by the mods.

We don’t need a rule. I wouldn’t know how to frame it. Saying a topic like evolution that prompts a reply about creationism should somehow be prohibited seems utterly impossible to codify into a general rule.

Like I said, talking with people sucks. Most of us don’t know what we are talking about or how to say it best, or both. TPF is where we get to test and improve our own thoughts and writing - let the rest of the trolls have at it.

Nietzsche makes it exciting to rethink everything.

He was a necessary correction to the rigidity of human aspirations.

He took the table that propped up everything the history of western philosophy and culture had to say and soundly flipped it over, shaking anything loose that deserved no ground.

I disagree with what he thought was left on the table as he turned it back over. But he was good at tearing down (in many cases), and good at writing, at his art, at what he built in witness to the torn.

He gave us the tuning fork and the hammer. (Not just he hammer)

He gave us the image of the tightrope walker (the precariousness of the “truth seeker”).

He gave us the gay science, the most honest approach to philosophy and truth.

He gave birth to post modernism, but I believe he would disown this offspring as a bastardization and simplification of what he actually said.

As a critic of his fellow man, he was as hypocritical as all of those he railed against. As a critic of morality, he yielded a priesthood, repleat with dogma and sins.

He exaggerated (lied) in order to unmask hidden truth.

But instead of resetting things in academia, he became reified himself despite all his resistance to reification.

He is misunderstood and misapplied by many.

He was a metaphysician (of the Apollonian and the Dionysian), a truth seeker, a new type of moralist.

But he was a horrible judge of others (Christ, Kant, Hegel, Socrates, Napoleon, etc). He would not deny his own biases, and he let them color all he made of Christianity, of morality, of science and of most other philosophers. So he was a bad judge of himself as well.

He was a genius at identifying facade and delusion. He was impoverished at identifying beauty and good.

He will forever be read. And justifiably so.

He is among the most important philosophic thinkers and writers in history, these being Plato/Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant along with him. (Pretty much everyone else said less than these).

But Nietzsche would not have been Nietzsche without there first being all of the institutions and ideas he tore down. So he should have been more humble and grateful towards them. He gave himself too much credit and them, too little.

But I love the guy for things like this:
“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history” -yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.”

-Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense

Why resist such a clear thinker and engrossing writer as one of the great ones?

But no need to believe everything he said just as well.

Echo chambers aren't helpful, and are essentially anti-philosophical in terms of enquiry. Having an extremely intense emotional reaction to someone's input is not a problem of the thread title LMAO. Even when you're 'correct' as to why. — AmadeusD

Basically what I said, only with your typical pith.

And we probably disagree with each other 75% of the time, which proves the rule that this forum doesn’t need a rule that would limit speech to echos, even if they are too wordy like mine.

If someone tries to say something that denies reality, like “unicorns are shy”, there is a simple solution - ignore it. No need to respond about unicorns or their shyness.

If you think someone’s post is utterly delusional, don’t respond. Or better, humbly educate and clarify, and when the troll continues to miss the point or deny clear reality, stop responding.

But policing truth deniers and enforcing banning and deletions of ideas, in a forum whose sole currency is words and the ideas those words are about? Sounds antithetical to the methods of science and mission of philosophers.

Shut people up with truth. This isn’t a classroom where only the loud ones are heard over the noise - we get to carefully, thoughtfully say exactly what we want to say every time in TPF.

Basically, it sucks to have to explain oneself to people who disagree. People suck, but once in a while we learn from them, or they agree with us, and restate what we were trying to say only better.

So, to me, learning and stating things with clarity is worth all the endless, childish, pains of dialoging with you people. :lol:

So I totally disagree with the notion that there is no place on a climate change thread for the concept “not climate change”. It’s the same subject.

We are all too quick to judge each other. A “denier” is “a mindless simpleton” is a “sub-human” - by default, everyone who posts here is equally human so whatever we adjudge of the others, we risk adjudging of ourselves.

Be humble, tell them they are a good person but their arguments and words are shit, explain why, and move on.

It’s the only way to have a true philosophy forum like this if you ask me. Rules (law, reality, truth) and police (ethical action, necessity) are questions here, so we should resist using them to narrow the dialogue.

At no point in any discussion (or act of thinking) will we ever not refer to substance undergoing process. “There” means “it” and “it” means “is”, once we say anything. Plato and Aristotle were wrong if they really said otherwise; and Wittgenstein and post-modernism were wrong when they quite frankly spoke at all.

So, as far as I have experienced, if one truly only sees the process (which would be indiscernible without a substance, but ok), then you cannot possibly have anything to say about “it”, about “process” or “process philosophy.” You can’t say what the essence of process means, is, or is used for in a sentence that uses other words besides “process.” You cannot say anything else beyond “process” as every question is every answer and every thing is nothing but process. You need substance to speak as much as you need a substance to measure out (to experience, to observe) a changing process. You need relata as much as relations. To say “in between” requires two more that stake the changing field between or among “them.”

Our 3,000 year frustration with discerning something of substance has become the post-modern frustration with trying to speak anymore.

opponents are often politically divided into either/or categories : e.g. Good vs Evil ; Realistic vs Fanciful ; Smart vs Stupid ; Knowledgeable vs Ignorant. Such a simplistic analysis is convenient because it eliminates philosophical subtleties, and allows the politically dominant group to haughtily look down their noses upon the others, as know-nothing losers. — Gnomon

That sums up where many posts on this forum end up. Shame on all of us who claim to seek clarity about our thinking, about being human.

systems should be understood as interconnected wholes rather than isolated parts, meaning the behavior of a system cannot be fully explained by examining its individual components alone; this contrasts with the traditional reductionist approach in classical physics where parts are considered separately. — Gnomon

Interconnected wholes has as much to do with parts (substance, identity, essence) as it does with wholes, for what is a part without its being a whole part - always we are making distinctions, building the lines that look inward at the thing-in-itself towards "essence" or "Identity", or outward, towards context and the dialectical process of unifying what was previously thought to be merely a separate "part."

pre-Kantian thought often assumed a more direct access to the world "as it is" without considering the limitations imposed by our cognitive faculties. — Gnomon

Kant made the point most precisely and most clearly. But the chains on the man in Plato's cave presenting only shadows can be understood as the structure of the mind constructing of all experience the "appearance" that is not "reality" recognizes the same disconnected nature of human experience. When Thales said "see that tree over there? Well it's not a tree. It's water." He was aware of the disconnect between what there is and what we know about it.

The dance between them is what truly lasts,
While substance slips away without a trace. — PoeticUniverse

Again, here is my issue with rejecting substance, rejecting essence. "The dance" although a living, moving, becoming process, has an essence, an identity, distinct from "the sleep" for instance. We cannot speak without objectifying, and no one will ever understand a word we say if those objects we speak of never appear similar to the listener (actual mind-independence).

We may not know much of things-in-themselves, but saying we should abandon any references to a distinct multiplicity of many things that distinguish themselves from each other, independent of minds, for the sake of acknowledging the fluctuations and motions that truly exist, puts us in a position where we can say nothing about any "thing".

Once we realize that motion alone is the only lasting moment (which is ironic if not paradoxical), and that may be the case, it is the end of all speaking, the end of all science, as there is one answer for every question: "becoming consumes it." For speaking is to speak about, and if we can only say "the dance between them is what truly lasts" then we are without "them" lasting long enough to say anything more about "them" than the dance will go on and they never really came to be.

It isn't wrong to focus on process. Process is truth. But you can't recognize process, nor can there be a process, without a thing that undergoes this process, this change. So it isn't wrong to focus on things, essences, substances just as well. This is a metaphysical claim, as well as a physical claim, as well as an ontological claim. And has ramifications in epistemology.

I submit that we are not just full of shit all the time. We are mostly full of shit, because process is relentless, and we are over-confident in our ability to find food and shelter so easily (so we might as well point out the eternal truth just as skillfully). But sometimes, we actually say something that can only be said and that can truthfully be said about some thing, some process, some part, some whole, some change measured, observable on changing occasions.

"It rests from change." - Heraclitus, the OG of process)

I also am sorry to go. I don't want to! — fdrake

I could submit the command to remove my own admin privileges — fdrake

Even in your exit you leave us with with a philosophical dilemma to ponder - the self-determined command defining your own identity, versus some other determiner defeating what "I want" once again.

Thanks for your time, insights and just for sharing a bit of who you are. Look forward to hearing from you again.

:up: :strong:

that there is more going on that what we can be conscious of directly sensing, from which it would seem to follow that there is more to objects than just a bunch of perceived qualities. — Janus

True, but I don’t see magnetism as a good example of more going on. It’s perceptible. So Arcane’s argument supporting the assertion that there is more going on than just a bunch of perceptible properties based on a distinction between seeing apples and (somehow not explained in the post) distinguishing magnetism doesn’t work.

I think that's not quite correct. — Janus

It maybe too simplistic for me to say "all we ever see is light" as an observation of optics, so point taken. But my general point is that, just like we don't directly see magnetism, we don't directly sense anything. So drawing a distinction between seeing an apple versus not-seeing magnetism when two magnets are operating on each other, doesn't work.

I see this argument to be using an empirical observation to refute empiricism.

2. I have many ways of detecting the presence of a magnetic field. A simple one is just to hold a magnet near a piece of iron, in which case I will sense the force of attraction between the magnet and the iron. — wonderer1

I was going to say the same thing. But I've already been reported for trolling and for assuming ill-intent. Welcome to the club!

I disagree that "Magnetism cannot be perceived by human beings."

It's kind of too late - we perceived something empirical enough to distinguish "magnetism".

I'm referring to the phenomena of attraction and repulsion involving two ordinary magnets. — Arcane Sandwich

What isn't empirical about the above reference?

We need light to see objects attract and repulse - all we ever see is light, we never see anything else. But we can still distinguish magnetic attractions and repulsions from kinetic ones.

When magnets are placed near each other, we see them move. We can rule out all kinds of movers, and we are left with the visual perception of magnetic forces.

We can close our eyes and hold two magnets near each other we feel the force of magnetism. Arcane, you called this "increasingly solid sensation" - why not call this magnetism that is being perceived, as opposed to "increasingly solid sensation?"

We could let two magnets collide and probably measure something repeatable about the forces by using the sound of the collision. Certain decibels equate to certain size objects of certain types of materials at certain distances apart and we can might estimate magnetic fields ... or call it increasingly loud collisions.

Yet magnetism is real. Therefore, magnetism is both real and non-empirical. This being the case, the existence of magnets are a counter-example to Empiricism, which means that Empiricism is false. — Arcane Sandwich

Are you saying that because we can't sense it, it is not empirical, but because we somehow know about it, it is still "real"? Shouldn't you make it more clear what you mean by "real magnetism" versus "empirical piece of iron" in order to clarify how "empiricism is false"?

P1) God exists and is the creator of the creation from nothing
P2) If so, then there is a situation in which only God exists
P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
P6) If so, then God changes
C) So, God changes — MoK

I like it, but I still don’t see how P2 necessarily follows from P1.

God exists, and created things only exist after God creates them, but how does it logically follow that the situation before God creates created thing is a situation where only God exists? We can assert “God exists” and we can assert “nothing else but God exists before God created,” but I don’t see that only God existing has to follow. The “if so, then” need not be so in P2.

Just like we don’t know God exists and have to assert it to get going here, and just like we don’t know God creates from nothing and have to assert it, we don’t know from these two assertions that God was the only thing that existed before God created from nothing. “If P1, then P2” is not logically necessary. There could be other uncreated things.

I don’t think you need God to be the only thing that exists to make your argument.

You need God to create from nothing, but you don’t need there to be nothing else besides God before creation from nothing, you just need God not to use anything else to cause the creation.

We can change the argument slightly and still follows that God has to change to create other things. — MoK

I guess maybe you see my point then. I agree you can still likely make the argument without establishing God is the only thing that exists before God created creation.

I think you need to assert somewhere that created things exist. It may be implicit in P1, but P1 makes God’s existence explicit, so the argument seems to beg we make the existence of created things just as explicit.

We all assume it, but it is missing from the argument. Maybe right before the conclusion:

…P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
New P6) Created things exist.
P7) If so, then God changes.
C) so, God changes.

Here, I am not going to discuss the Christian God. — MoK

I am sort of Nietzschean when it comes to the God of the philosopher - everyone sort of makes up their own placeholders when they mean "God" in a philosophical argument. So if reference to "Father" not moving, "Son moved" as one and the same thing called "God" is off-putting because it admittedly sounds Christian, then all that was poor choice of words that didn't help me describe what I'm trying to say to you.

First of all, I agree, God, itself, changes, is moving. If someone else, like Aquinas or anyone thinks God can't move, or doesn't change at all, I am suspicious of what they mean if they mean an agent can create without moving; even creation from nothing doesn't mean an agent has not moved to effect something new, and therefore this agent has changed. So I agree with your ultimate conclusion.

And I agree that if you accept the premises of your argument, the conclusion follows.

When I talk about "God", since I am a believer, I am talking about something I think I know, in my case, as a Catholic, about some one I think I know. So whether God changes or does not change has the meaning to me of getting to know God himself. Just to digress from the logic and metaphysics to let you know I am not merely playing here. (We are all playing here, but I, to myself, am not merely playing, even when I say "God".)

So it's an interesting question - we Catholics learn that God is eternally perfect, unmoved, and never changing, not deprived of anything ever that would beg something be moved. He could not move as he is already where he would move to. Etc., etc.

Yet, God must have moved in order for his creation from nothing to have been first not created, and then by God's movement, created. Without God changing, nothing would have been created. Nothing itself would have changed, if God were not changing nothing to something. And since nothing did change to something (because now is something), and only God could do it, God had to do, had to move, has to change.

I like the use of "undecided state" to represent before nothing was changed into creation, because it makes an agent out of God, which makes sense for a creator God. Agents need hands to move things, even if those things are nothing into somethings. So agents, are moving, changing things, changing their hand from here, to now there, holding something, from what was nothing in hand.

But, if I am going to analyze not the validity of your argument, but whether I think you've created a proof for the motion of God who is creator, I think P2 is not necessary, and so C1 would not necessarily follow.

I think somehow, this argument could be shortened.

P1) God exists and is the creator of the creation from nothing
P2) If so, then there is a situation in which only God exists
C1) So, there is a situation in which only God exists
P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
C2) So, the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
P6) If so, then God changes
C3) So, God changes — MoK

P1. God is the creator of creation from nothing. And this God exists. No reason to differ here and we are off to the races.

P2. If God exists and is the creator of creation from nothing, then there is a situation in which only God exists.

Although I understand why you are referring to a situation before creation as a situation in which God only exists; before anything else existed, there was nothing, but God, and if God created creation from nothing, then all that needed to be was God for there to be creation. I get it. Before many things were created, there was only one creator only, so "only God exists."

But couldn't God create all of creation from nothing, and yet not be the only thing that exists while he is doing it? Like this: before creation, there was God and a blob of X (imagine anything, in a blob or a heap if you will, shaped in some limited way, and imagine whatever you imagine as "God" next it, and imagine absolutely nothing else).

So P1 works still in the God plus blob pre-created situation; God can exist and be the creator of the creation from nothing, as long as God doesn't create anything using that blob of X. The problem with P2 (for me) is the "If so, then".

If God is the creator of the creation from nothing, it does not follow that, if so, then there is a situation in which only God exists. It could be otherwise.

Now we can assert P2 anyway and, like P1, just assert: 1, there exists a creator God, and 2, the God, before creation, was the only thing that existed.

But now C1 is not a logical conclusion from P1 plus P2, but is instead a restated of P2.

But let's move on anyway.

Let's assume, for the sake of arguing whether God as we conceive of it is changing or not, we have established that God exists, is a creator from nothing, and that prior to any such creation, "there is a situation in which God only exists."

P3 and the rest of the argument follow without any issues I can see.

I like the term "undecided state" because it requires both a Decider (presumably God), and a new state after a decision has been made. It works.

But it includes time, which may be fine, and necessary (as any change seems to require time be spent changing), but if time can be eliminated, maybe the point about God changing, even outside of time, would be made sharper.

At P3 you said:
If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists.

How about:
If so, God exists in relation to nothing (as only God exists from P2).

And then P4 would be:
If so, then, by creating, God exists in relation to the created things, (no longer in relation to nothing).

And then we need a new P5:
Created things exist.

C2: So, God changes.

So my totally new argument, based on yours, but left on the stove probably too long, (and certainly an analytic mess but I'm just spit-balling about "God" and we can work out the logic later if useful):

P1) God exists, and created things exist from nothing.
P2) There is the situation in which created things do not exist (have not been created).
C1) So, since God exists, God is the creator of the creation from nothing.
P3) If so, absent creation, God exists in relation to nothing.
P4) If so, then, by creating, God exists in relation to the created things.
P5) Created things exist.
C2) So, God changes. (from creator in relation to nothing, to creator in relation to things.)

:up:

Space exits without measuring anything. — Corvus

But then, space is also no-thing, empty of things that could be said to exist. Things that take up space are the best approximation of "space exists". And things that take up space have to be measured to be identified.

I'm not in the habit of entertaining trolls. — Arcane Sandwich

Just berating them. Got it.

the tremendous virtual shit that you just took on my Thread. — Arcane Sandwich

I keep trying to be respectful anyway. (Really a “virtual shit”?)

If God exists, God is….Y.
God exists.
So God is….Y.

As I am trying to say, how does this necessitate “Y” be anything in particular?

If God exists, God is a ham sandwich.
God exists.
So, God is a ham sandwich.

Same, perfect logic. But nothing about God or ham sandwiches or Jesus illuminated - only logic 101 is illuminated.

Guess you are done with me.

The choice seems to be the result — noAxioms

A choice is what I call the result of choosing. Not any result of a calculating process. Choosing, if it exists, entails an agent who makes a free, deliberate selection among variables.

The program is not able to generate any other results, because it is not an agent capable of choosing which variable result to generate. There is always, only one move the program can make. So there is either no variables to select, or there is no agent. In the case of a program, there is no agent.

I still don’t see a distinction between what a choice is, and what a free choice is.
Of course. You chose your definition that way. — noAxioms

Or you didn’t explain the distinction you see well enough for my thick skull.

The word “choice”, to me, entails a free agent presented with variables who acts by selecting one variable. So saying “free” choice is redundant, as freedom is a necessary component of any choice.

Above where you defined choice and then defined free choice differently, your definition of a mere “choice” was, to me, the definition of a deterministic outcome (so not a choice at all). You didn’t define “choice” versus a “free choice”, you defined a deterministic outcome versus any choice (which always includes freedom, if choice exists at all.)

Thanks for announcing that on your thread.

My first post looks snarky to me now. Sorry it came off that way. Was honestly trying to prompt you to restate your position.

If God exists, God is identical to Jesus.
God exists.
So God is identical to Jesus.

The only thing that moves in that argument is God - he goes from maybe or maybe not existing, to “God exists.” You already defined Jesus as identical to this God thing in P1. So the conclusion “therefore God is Jesus” though valid in logical form, puts in modus ponens form the simple assertion, the simple definition, “God is Jesus.”

I don’t bother with all of the analysis if I see the end game already. If you are more interested in the personal chess match, I’m not your interlocutor.

I am interested in what do we learn from this argument? What is now known or made clearer?

We already knew modus ponens. (Or you did. I don’t know what an argument is as you said.). Thanks for the lesson about logic.

But what about God and Jesus - maybe you should define your terms. From an empirical perspective, it seems God and Jesus may be meaningless fictions. How can you even assert “God exists” and say you’ve said anything besides “x exists?” And if we don’t really know what a God is, how can we be sure Jesus (I guess who could NOT be God) is identical to God.

But you said you were an atheist - if you would rather not bother defining what God is before equating him with Jesus, I’d get it. But then I wouldn’t really understand anything more about your argument either.

I’ve answered your questions.
I’ve given you plenty of content to address that you would rather just dismiss.

I’ve ignored your attitude to respond to your content anyway.

And you give me “your nonsense” and the definition of “ad hominem.”

Like I said, you don’t seem to want to talk about your own argument.

I haven’t been assuming ill-intent. You said I’m trolling for trying my best to speak with you.

You started the post.

Putting the word “God” and “exist” in an argument with proper modus ponens form doesn’t prove anything actually exists. Like I said, Indont think anyone can use logic to jump to ontology. It’s why I disagree Anselm and Descartes succeeded in proving anything actually exists.

Last try. And you owe me an apology now if you want to rejoin a respectful dialogue.

If I had the genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences that you have, would I not have typed your post and vice versa? — Truth Seeker

That is the question.

I have those genes, environments, etc.

So is it the same question to ask myself “given all that has preceded me, would I do anything else besides type this post? Could I do anything else besides repeat your words “would I not have typed your post…?”

So since I am the same as me, does it help me to understand a moment when I choose? It doesn’t. I still don’t understand how I am free to choose, nor how these words here are determined. Neither are clear.

My current answer is that, somehow, our brains kick out an awareness of awareness - we are once removed from ourselves (which gives us the concept of “self” to look back on). We can reflect. This happens outside of the normal causal chain, and builds a space for choice. This is such a fragile happening, environments and nutrients etc are suspended with it, and so our choice comes from this new space outside of ourselves (from nowhere). So we build the free agent we are in the act of asserting a “choice” in the causal chain. We are not free to choose until we just choose.

Am I making sense? To you? Because I’m barely making sense to me.