it’s a pretty heartless teachingSo, we've switched back to that one again? You are the only one who thinks that. Maybe you should write a book.
Xian: “I was getting more at the “real you” that most of these people say. Without the influence of culture and everything. Otherwise you live a lie”
TimB: You are a product of your biological inheritance plus your history of environmental influences since conception. You have a sense of “you” by virtue of your thinking and perceptual abilities. THAT IS IT. There is no “real you” beyond that. If you are getting at a “soul”, that is just a concept of something supernatural. It is bunk. If you truly do not want to live a lie, then understand what I am telling you. I think that I have laid it out as simply as possible.
Since you keep shifting focus, I want to try to summarize what you’ve been saying. We keep responding to part of what you’re saying, and you never try to take anything to its conclusion, so we’ve been going in circles.
There are these ideas about there not being a self that you’ve seen in Buddhism, Alan Watts and websites like Broward. You don’t have a logical argument against them, and that bothers you for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is, if there is no self, then there is no purpose, therefore suffering isn’t real, therefore there is no reason to care about anyone’s suffering. There’s no reason to do anything. So you’re stuck between, either they’re wrong and the teaching is “heartless”, or they’re right and existence itself is meaningless and cruel and provides no answers. Those are not very good choices.Is that at all accurate? Did I miss anything?
What I’d suggest is, there are other choices. But you have to put in some work. You have to take on parts of this, one at a time. Questions like:
What is the self?
What are the principles of Buddhism and how are they expressed by current practitioners of it?
Are there flaws in any of that, either Buddhism as expressed in the ancient texts or ideas about it now and meditation and neuroscience or whatever else is being included in this?
Are there consequences to a conclusion about what the self is or if free will exists? What does it mean to you and as well as what does it mean to society, like how we make laws and help the mentally ill and all the other things humans do?
Buddhism says that there is no permanent, separate atomized self. That it is all connected. If we are talking about the web of life with parts and all then I can get on board.
Neuroscience says there isn’t an area of the brain where the self is located but it could just be something far more complex than “here it is” so that doesn’t say much.
Some call it an “awareness of self” but eh.
But if there is no self and no other, then there isn’t anyone to save or feed or protect. But also no one to harm. At best it would be apathy towards others and suffering and neglect at worst. Hospitals would be gone since no one “dies” or gets hurt.
Of course no free will would undermine society as we know it. Our justice system is based on choice and if we never had choice then our rules mean nothing. People could just disobey and say they didn’t have a choice
So, I don’t think I missed anything. You’ve started repeating yourself again and showing me where you’re stuck. You’re jumping ahead with conclusions before you’ve really looked in to the questions you have. For example, there are tons of discussions online about how acknowledging our lack of free will would not undermine society. It would change the justice system, but we’ve been moving toward a reform system instead of a punishment system for a long time now. So we’re already doing the thing you say we can’t do.
You are one frustrating son of a monkey. You exist. Others exist.
Neuroscience doesn’t find a central area in the brain for self, because our perception of self is a complex and shifting pattern of neurological correlates for a wide variety of thoughts. Even a single thought may have a complex passing neurological correlate.
Still those complex shifting patterns of neurological correlates exist. You exist.
If you don’t exist, then who the hell has been texting all of the crap on this thread? Are you a bot? Even if you are a bot, and don’t have a true self, you still exist well enuf to continually spout crappy ideas.
Re: free will, we do not have libertarian free will, i.e., everything we do is ultimately determined by our biological influences plus the extraordinarily complex history of environmental influences that we have experienced and do experience. But it still behooves us to have laws and a criminal justice system.
Please man, get it together.
Except it wouldn’t matter because again any action can be blamed on “I had no choice”. You think that everyone is aware of the free will debate when they aren’t. Even the reform system is still rooted in free will. I have often hear the argument that if everything is predetermined then what is the point of living. There’s also the implication that people will just be stuck a certain way because they have no choice.
You don’t seem to understand that without fault or guilt, crimes can just be done with the rationalization that “I didn’t have a choice”. When people open up to the idea the free will is an illusion, it will end badly. It will just be an excuse for all bad behavior.
Look up compatablist free will. You can find that, barring someone or something preventing you, you can choose to do what you want. You cannot choose what you want, but you can choose to act according to what you want.
IOW, reality has some parameters. If reality had no parameters, THAT is when everything would become meaningless – true chaotic meaninglessness.
I have a love/hate relationship with the free will debate. It’s really interesting, but people come up with crazy arguments about it. Maybe it’s that I have a love/hate relationship with people. There are maybe 3 or 4 of them that I love, but as a whole, I hate them. I know it takes a lot of them to create a transportation system, but once it’s done, get the hell out of my lane. Anyway, where was I. Right. Free will. I once got to explain the word “because” to some Spanish speakers. Their English was much better than my Spanish, but they use por qué for either “why” or “because” and they didn’t get that. Luckily they understand when I used Newton’s law of cause and effect to explain that the word meant “be the cause of”.
So, it’s right there in our language. If you use “because I don’t have free will” as a defense, then you’ve shown that you don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re giving a reason for what you did which implies you have a will. The lack of free will does not release us from the long of chain of cause and effect we are experiencing, it just acknowledges that we are in it. It’s why we now understand that we can predict behaviors of people based on their environment. This doesn’t release anyone from responsibility from anything, it just moves us toward a model of understanding ourselves and treating people with compassion instead of blaming them for things that are out of their control.
I heard that compatablist free will isn’t valid and is just trying to ignore the reality that free will is a myth.
Plus reality is already meaningless, just not chaotic
No free will pretty much means “no responsibility”. It would be like trying to put a volcano on trial. Compassion also goes out the window too without free will.
Someone complaining about the fact that our behavior is a product of our complex biological and history of environmental and current environmental influences, makes about as much sense as complaining about the fact that we have to breath in order to live.
It’s a part of what is.
But sure you can complain about it:
“Oh, my. What is the point of living if I have to constantly breath? How can my life have meaning, if nothing matters if I quit breathing? Why does it matter if there are social rules or whether anyone follows them, because what it ultimately critical is just continuing to breath. Oh the existential crisis! Oh the humanity!”
Xian: No free will pretty much means “no responsibility”. It would be like trying to put a volcano on trial. Compassion also goes out the window too without free will.
TimB: NOOO! Stop that nonsense! We are designed by our biology and environment to develop what we call responsibility, and to have compassion. I daresay that you have experienced having compassion, as have I. So how the hell can you suggest it doesn’t exist?
“Responsibility” is involved with our biological inheritance as social animals and in what we learn during our lives as members of social groups. We learn rules whether explicit or vague, and within social groups there tend to be certain contingencies that may apply if one is “responsible” or not. So responsibility will typically be assigned in social settings and contingencies will tend to follow depending on whether one is responsible or not.
Organisms are not volcanoes. The behavior of organisms, such as humans, can be affected by contingencies. A volcano will not, OTOH, be affected by a scolding, for example, for having erupted. If a human has an eruption of verbal nonsense, he/she might be impacted by being subsequently scolded. So get a grip!
Responding to https://centerforinquiry.org/forums/topic/is-the-mind-pictures/page/15/#post-299706
Good one TimB. I’ll add, “oh my, I can’t stop this desire I have to survive. I only exist because some bacteria evolved into a complex creature that wants to procreate so it can have a new host and continue to exist. I’m forced to experience joy, which is hard to understand if you don’t know what “not joy” is, how horrible. How can I go on, oh that’s right, because I evolved to want to go on. What a mean trick the universe is playing on me.”
Swing and a miss, both of you.
Compassion is something that is learned not really inherent and in the cases where it’s not it only applies to the in group. I know I had to learn compassion and empathy, or at least pretend I cared when other people were sad.
You missed the point by a long shot. No on is talking about body regulation but more like desires, dreams, etc. If there aren’t surprises in life then it’s pretty pointless. Kind of like how rules are pointless without free will.
Organisms are like volcanoes if you say there is no free will.
Wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong.
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Compassion is also part of our biological evolution as social animals.
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Desires and dreams also exist as products of our biology and environment.
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Claiming that there are no surprises, is another claim that you seem to have just pulled out of a private orifice. I suppose you are suggesting that things being determined means there are no surprises. That is not true at all. The myriad of potential contingencies are such that prediction of much of anything is limited. The very best we can do is predict within certain parameters of probability. And with probabilities there can always be surprises.
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Rules tend to be made and followed because following them makes things better for us, in some way, than they would otherwise be. That is their point. That our behavior is determined does not diminish that point, and does not diminish the impact of following rules or not.
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Organisms are distinctly different from non-living things like volcanoes. Organisms have behavior that is subject to learning by the contingencies that exist and occur with the behavior they emit. An organism can learn to behave differently. A volcano can not. I assume that you are an organism, so please take advantage of your potential to learn.
It sure seems like Xian is looking for excuses to do bad things. He’s hoping to plead his innocence due to lack of free will.
I hope I’m wrong, but he won’t let this dead horse rot in peace (he’s made zero progress after months of repeatedly being told the same thing). There’s definitely something else going on here.
Swing and a miss, both of you. --XianYou seem to think this is some sort of discussion, where we are exchanging ideas or scoring points against each other's brilliant insights. It's not. I'm sure there's something I've learned in this thread, but mostly it's been by reading the links and thinking of ways to express my thoughts in relation to the latest bizarre notion about reality you've come up with.
I mean really, “compassion is learned”, what kind of point is that? Language is learned too, but we have language because we have the FOXP2 gene, which we’ve had for however long, I don’t know.
And how are there not surprises? There may not be free will, but there is a universe, and you would need to know everything that has ever happened and why to be able to come up with the formula that could predict will happen next. In other words, you would need a computer that was as big as the universe including the dimension of time. So, I’m not too worried about someone creating that.
Our development of emotions, including compassion, I suspect goes deep into our evolutionary history, to way before we evolved the ability to develop complex language.
Even rats demonstrate some behavior indicative of basic empathic ability. (I think empathy is a component of compassion.) e.g., A rat will grimace at another rat who he recognizes is in pain, but only if the rat is a friend of his. I kid you not.
Didn’t know that about rats. I have read that chimps show compassion to one another.
My favourite though is the Bonobo. All of life’s problems are solved by a good frack. When they meet a strange troop of bonobo, the first thing they do is to get down, or up, as the case may be.
I’ve often thought humans would be much happier if we used the same approach. Well, this human would be downright thrilled ,if constantly exhausted.