Priceless. And Free. 2

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  Anyhow, I won't post any more of these, at least for now. The Club is open, though, and altogether a hoot. Come visit! You can joi and engage, too!
  
  Alain Briand III

  A short argument for free will in the objectivist stand point of it. Thoughts? questions? quondrys?

  
  

  To deny free will, requires free will~!

  www.youtube.com
  

  This video-graphic work counters the statements of the Honestdiscussioner, and attempts to prove humans have free will. With free will, man can have volition...

  
  

   ·  ·  · Share · September 16 at 9:55pm

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      David Christopher Arnold Um. I happen to agree with the first commenter that weak arguments are given for both sides of this discussion. They toss around the statement free will without defining it and hedge around it with arguments they claim support it but which do not actually argue anything.
      

      September 16 at 10:01pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold If you want to see what I mean, you should try to diagram the arguments presented to the extent of picking out what the thesis statements are (the conclusions) and the evidence presented for them. They are loosely connected at best.
      

      September 16 at 10:02pm · 
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      Alain Briand III Dhorpatan defines was free will as well as why to deny it is self refuting. seems like a fair augment to me anyway given the time limited on YouTube. Perhaps you standers are higher. If I could I would post Nathaniel Branden's Basic Principles of Objectivism: Lecture 5 Free Will. But thats like a 2 hour lecture. You seem to believe in determinism in some form. How would you deffent you opsition?
      

      September 16 at 10:46pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Nondeterministic effects only happen on a subatomic scale, so they don't affect biology. The brain is biological. Hence, the brain is deterministic.
      

      September 16 at 10:57pm · 
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      Alain Briand III The brain. How about the mind? Like are cognitive faculty and volition. I suppose my question is: Is all knowledge only a consequence of the brains deterministic nature?
      

      September 16 at 11:10pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold The mind and the brain are the same thing. And yes. Knowledge is only to be had in a system that can store information. Our brain is just such a system. It is hardware and software at once.
      

      September 16 at 11:30pm · 
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      Alain Briand III Then you can not clam knowledge because any conlution you make is but the totality of you hitory, biology, and environment. This is where denying free will is self refuting and a epistemological contradiction. You can not clam knowledge without free will. "knowledge beyond what is given in perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will) and adherence to a specific method of validation through observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive and deductive logic." There is a major difference between a computer and a mind. You enter 1+1 in a proper functional coculater it will away say 2. You ask someone and they can say I don't know, I don't wanna think about it, 3, 1+1 can not be proven to be 2, ect. We are much more then a computer, a beast, or a zombie. Would you not say this is a fair assesment?
      

      September 16 at 11:56pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold ‎'any conlution you make is but the totality of you hitory' - what does this mean?
      

      September 17 at 12:15am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Uh, Alain, I think that's exactly what I'm saying. Everything I do is determined by everything around me, absolutely.
      

      September 17 at 12:16am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold I claim knowledge because the notion that having knowledge is a possible thing is a useful illusion. In reality, I /am/ knowledge, in that my brain is my knowledge and I am my brain. So anything that affects my brain affects the me that is me, and there is nothing you could call 'me' that affects the world back except for vocal cords, limbs and the like that actually produce physical phenomena.
      

      September 17 at 12:17am · 
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      Alain Briand III Sorry. hitory= history. Dood. The clam is self-refuting. To deny free will/ volition is to deny knowledge. Its like saying. " Knowledge is imposable" If knowledge is impossible then your refuting your own statement. Just like "there is no meaning in life" That is self refuting. It bags the question what is the meaning in saying that? This is saying A=non-A. This is a violation of the law of identity. You can not logicaly clam knowledge is impossable.
      

      September 17 at 12:35am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Er. Just because a computer stores information doesn't mean it thinks. To say 'thinking about doing something' is to miss the point of what doing something is - a nervous system reacting to a stimulus. It is only a process inasmuch as it is a physical process.
      

      September 17 at 3:11am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold So equating knowledge with thought is really the error here. I am arguing that there is no 'thinking' being done.
      

      September 17 at 3:12am · 
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      Alain Briand III Your still nullifying your own clam. " Thinking dose not exist " how did you com to this conclusion? Obviously you didn't think about it. You can not nullify thinking, knowledge, and epistemology without self-refuting. You can not take on determinism without epistemological nihilism. There is no such thing as contradiction and that is exactly what your doing. If your "knowledge" is only imposed on you thought you preseption then you have absolutely know way of know if any clam you have is true or fules. Theres no reason in this view. There is no way of testing what you have storte vs reality. if it is correct. A lunitic could be just as correct about his idea that the world is made of cheese. It seems you are using environmental determinism. This fall short of this question. how do new concepts come about if we are just "storage system"? How did man come up with attaching a pointy rock to a long stick using rope? How did man come up with rope? How did man come up abstractions? We are not passively observing. We have a cognitive faculty, we can form conseptions. We think. and we have the choice of thinking or not thinking. We can asses are own judgment and adjust or not adjust them accordingly. You can't clam anything with determinism. You cant even get of the ground of philosophy. You can't go into morality or politics. With your epistemological ideology you journey ends with "theirs know way of knowing anything/ claming anything.".
      

      September 17 at 4:37am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold I agree that there is zero way to know if anything is absolutely true, actually. That's okay.
      

      September 17 at 9:06am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold But, it's a useful illusion.
      

      September 17 at 9:06am · 
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      Mark Delano So this is pretty much off topic, but I jwanted to thank Alain for providing me with my new favorite Facebook quote of the week:
      
      "The clam is self-refuting."
      In a close second was, "Your still nullifying your own clam."
      
      Stupid clams....
      
      Sorry for the interruption...you may proceed.
      

      September 17 at 9:23am · 
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      Alain Briand III ‎^oops....Clam...Claim....ya....: P theirs are reason for that... David Christopher Arnold is that where your going to end it : /?
      

      September 17 at 11:05am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Yep. The discussion you seem to want to have ignores too many factors contribution
      

      September 17 at 11:37am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold ‎*contributing to the discussion.
      

      September 17 at 11:38am · 
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      Alain Briand III Well I don't know where you can get of the ground. There is no way of claiming determinism in any form without also claiming knowledge/reason/volition is impossible. You can't claim that there is no knowledge/reason/volition without self-refuting. A can not be non-A at the same time and same respect. I'm I wrong or what?
      

      September 17 at 11:51am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold You're operating on the assumption that illusion is less powerful than it actually is. Also, knowledge is not the same as reason is not the same as volition. Knowledge is substance, reason is a process, volition is an urge.
      

      September 17 at 12:21pm · 
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      Alain Briand III I'm not saying there the same but that the clam of determinism nullify claiming them all. Free will (the ability to focus and unfocus ones mind) etymologically is a irreducible primary. Just like the totality of existence is to metaphysics. You can not claim anything by denying these axioms. Its not something we can be absolutely certen of anything but%99.99999...(infinite regress) is good enough, A=A. "You're operating on the assumption that illusion is less powerful than it actually is." What do you mean? Are we diving into skepticism now?
      

      September 17 at 12:56pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Wait, you're claiming that the ability to focus or not focus proves free will? Okay, so what controls when we choose what to focus on, and what controls which focus we choose?
      

      September 17 at 1:01pm · 
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      Alain Briand III I am saying that the ability to focus is mind to degrees is axiomatic like existence, it is a acausal primary. I think you falling into monocasality, the nutoneon meconistic model. This is inatiquite for the explanation of life let along mankind. Causality is the relation between entities and action not a reaction to a perverse action. The source of living entities locomotion lays within themselves. A plant doesn’t grow because it is pushed. Man by is nature is given a choice that he must make and that only he can make without any outside forces influencing him. The responsibility to regulate his action. Asking what makes us think or not think is asking what action coauses that reaction. To what force is thinking a reaction to you must check your premise of causality. Monocasality has relevance but it is limited and by no means sinomomis to causality in the abstract or in general. So to repeat to focus or not to focus is a acausal primary. It dose not have casual antasedons as othere choices like the choice of Movie A or B.
      

      September 17 at 2:05pm · 
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      David Christopher Arnold You're saying that nothing causes the ability to focus? So you're saying there's absolutely no brain damage that could occur which would shut down that ability?
      

      September 17 at 4:25pm · 
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      Alain Briand III No. That is damage to the cognitive faculty. Then I talk about the volitional contentiousness of a individual I talk about a "normal" brain. A schizophrenic, the mentally heady capt have servear cognitive inability to some can still perform volition. There are physical limitations to action. Brain damage is a act of force on the connective faculty. Just because we may be able to control a human body in some point this would be a act of force on the cognitive faculty.yes if you take out someone’s arms they lose the ability to play guitar if you remove half the brain you lose several cognitive abilities. Saveraly enough there is no contentedness and we can become passive. But a ‘normal’ brain doesn’t have these limitations just like a normal body dose not. If you eliminate or servearly damige the brain you affect the ability of the mind. But simple observation, preseption, empirical information dose not force one to take action, to make conclusions, to form abstractions. Are perceptual information given to a mind dose not determent are conceptual conclusions by a passive deterministic posses notion.
      

      September 17 at 9:51pm · 
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      Steve Bass Hmm. Can't paste a link here without figuring I've not the time to do just now. Look up and read "Descarte's Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" by Antonio R. Damasio. Though Damasio won't take the point as far as I, (we'll go there later), it provides super-excellent fodder for this convo, and makes me want to post a little Spock's Brain!
      

      September 18 at 12:27am · 
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      Steve Bass Also--who says we are not trapped in a Matrix-like position where we are forced by Determinism to appear to exercise what is actually bogus, erzatz free will?
      

      September 18 at 1:00am ·  ·  1 person

  
  

  Andrew Riddle

  I think, therefore...thoughts exist?

   ·  ·  · September 15 at 10:00am
  

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      David Christopher Arnold That's how the Buddhists put it.
      

      September 15 at 12:29pm · 
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      Adam Hann Umm...sure. Though not too sure where to go with this. I think that Descartes makes and arbritory stopping point in his original statement. Your statement is more along the lines of truth to me, but it does not say much about the universe. It's sorta like saying I start the washer and my clothes come out clean
      

      September 15 at 3:18pm via mobile · 
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      Tiffany UltrabergGreenberg r u asking this..or where r going with it epistemologically speaking???
      

      September 15 at 4:18pm · 
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      Alain Briand III Descartes statement has cerculer reasoning. That like saying I saw a ghost and I know it because I saw a ghost. The better way to put it is that existence exists. Existence is identity. We have the means to identify it IE consciousness. That's objectivisms stance in a nutshell.
      

      September 15 at 4:57pm · 
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      Steve Bass Hahaha! Who says? What happened to Kant's existence if he got drunk? What if he blacked out and stumbled around the neighborhood hitting on his friends' wives?
      

      September 16 at 10:24am · 
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      David Christopher Arnold Consciousness is no real means to identify what your identity is based on, though. The brain does not come with information on how it itself works. We're starting to find, via science, that a machine can tell what a person is about to do way sooner than that person can tell you, about a 300-500 ms lag.
      

      September 16 at 12:16pm · 
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      Steve Bass Oh, this is going to be SO much fun, kids! The whole thing, I mean.... On Buddhist takes: "Addressing the matter of selfishness he,(Tibetian Boddhisatva, the monk Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan), insisted that our first compassionate responsibility is to alleviate our own suffering, that is, to see to our own comfort."http://hipgnosis21.blogspot.com/2011/09/walking-on-water-across-tightrope.html Sorry, Bruce, I'm quoting myself again!
      

      
      

      hipgnosis: Walking on Water, Across a Tightrope, Without a Fishnet

      hipgnosis21.blogspot.com
      

      
      

      September 18 at 12:34am ·  · 
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      Steve Bass On the brain's impossible task:
      

      September 18 at 12:35am · 
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      Steve Bass man this thing is crap! If anyone knows why I can't post some links fill me in, please. Meantime, Miskatonic University Press has a succinct description of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem that's my fave. It comes up right quick if you search those terms. It is mathematical--you'll have to look further for the philosophical ramifications. That'll be your deal....
      

      September 18 at 12:39am · 
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      Steve Bass Well, I'm a dumbass! It's Spock's Beard! I'll post some anyhow, but consider this: Spock's brain, Donovan's brain, Botox users, and AI programmers all have in common a specific handicap preventing them from functioning in a genuinely human capacity, or even too very well at all in any capacity. Vulcans may be able to live without passion; we cannot. Poke around these ideapoints a spell and you'll see what I mean.... Might try some Douglas Hofstadter for spice here, too.
      

      September 18 at 12:46am · 
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  Alain Briand III

  It is astonishingly surprising how a recording done almost 50 years ago can hold such relivence to are current state in politics.

  
  

  Ayn Rand - Conservative Sellout of Capitalism

  www.youtube.com
  

  Rand explains how many conservatives attempt to justify capitalism on fallacious grounds.http://www.LibertyPen.com/

  
  

   ·  ·  · Share · September 17 at 10:48pm