On May 2, 1:29 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote: > > > If awareness is primordial, > > I think it's fundamental.
Do you consider the terms to be the same or different? > > > > there is really nothing more or less to say about it other than that it > > is primordial orientation itself. > > So awareness is the feeling data has when it is being processed, and there > is not much more you can say about it. Data has no feeling when it is being processed. We have evidence of this in Blindsight, and in the lack of indications of any sort of feeling from all data processing equipment we have ever constructed. > > > You don't seem to get that color doesn't exist outside of our awareness > > > of it. > > Of course I get it, it's not as if it's a new or profound idea I didn't say it was, but it sounds like you are saying that color, as in the yellow light, would still exist even if nothing could ever see it. > > > No, you don't need a reason to act on the reason that you create. > > That makes not one bit of sense. If you act on the reason you created then > it's deterministic, Acting on the reason you created = Free Will You can call it deterministic, because someone indeed is determining it, but it makes the term determinism meaningless, since even random processes are determined within expected ranges of possible outcomes. The experience of voluntarily deciding on some course of action is universally understood to be distinctly different from doing something by accident, involuntarily, or by coercion. It's a different dynamic which does not reduce to passive spectatorship of an external order. > if you don't then it's random and "the reason that you > create" is totally irrelevant to the question of why you acted as you did. > Read what you wrote above and then spend at least 5 seconds thinking about > it and I think you will find this is one of those sentences we were talking > about that were written for no reason whatsoever, in other words gibberish. If you are waiting for me to accept the absurd idea that the universe must be only divided into categories of random or determined, then don't hold your breath. Free will is ordinary, not magic, and absolutely represents a third fundamental alternative that is neither purely random/determined, nor non-random/non-determined but plays off of all of those categories. > > > You are creating it for no other purpose. > > Then it's deterministic caused by these nameless "other purpose" things. If I decide to type this sentence, I don't need to create a reason to do it, I just decide what I want to say and type it. There are all kinds of potential reasons why I would type something and not something else, but by choosing which of those reasons to privilege or ignore, as well as many other factors which are not necessarily reasonable, I freely choose my actions. I use reason, but I am independent of it as well to a degree. > > > You are making up your mind. > > And if you ask a computer to find the prime factors of a very large number > you may have to wait a long time to see what it decides to do while the > machine makes up its mind. It's not making up its mind, you can stop it at any point in the calculation and see precisely where in the process it is. Another computer could pick it up just as easily. Computation is not making up any mind, it's just latency in producing a report. > > >> So your preference for X was caused by your preference for X. > > > > Yes, > > Then what you are saying is not very deep. Free will isn't deep, it is primitively simple and obvious. > > > the idea of cause is redundant. You just prefer something > > If your preference had no cause then it's random. No, preferring something is neither random nor non-random. It is part of the capacities of sentient beings. We have preferences on different levels, preferences as human beings, as Americans, as men, etc, but we also have idiosyncratic preferences too that we can change and create dynamically. It is an important part of what makes us alive. > > > You can use that preference as a cause of actions > > Obviously. > > > > and the preference itself arises from entangled ensembles of causes > > Then it's deterministic. No. It's like a clutch. The gears are deterministic, but you have to decide when to put in the clutch and pick which gear you want. The transmission is deterministic but the driver operates it intentionally. > > Let me now summarize the argument you've been making over the last week or > so, on Monday Wednesday and Friday you say all human actions are > deterministic, on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday you say all human actions > are random, and on Sunday you're a bit confused and say it's not caused by > X and simultaneously not not caused by X. When have I ever said that "all human actions" are deterministic or random? I have never been confused on this issue in any sense as far as I am aware. My position has been clear from the start. Note the title of this thread and supporting article. At this point I guess you are giving up trying to convince me that voluntary actions are no less deterministic than involuntary reflex and going to try to convince me that I have been saying things that I have never uttered in my life. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
