proof that free will exists.

[binary suns]

1. hypothesis: free will doesn't exist
2. observe: the experience of free will
3. introduce: the fact that experience is one aspect of reality. 
4. it follows that experience is true, and does exist.
5. return to the observation that there is an experience of free will
6. qed. 

[donttouchme]

The "experience" of free will is little too subjective. Do you define free will to have limiting parameters? In other words, we can make choices between two (or more) situations but the number of situations is not infinite. 

 

You are also not free to not be yourself. I think most of that is splitting hairs by what convention defines as free will (in other words--I could choose chocolate or vanilla for ice cream and I am free to choose--I believe most would call that free will but philosophers differ). In any case, there's a lot to be said and defined on this subject before truly entering any kind of debate.

[praetorius]

1. People experience all sorts of wacky hallucinations

2. qed

[Garion]

It's been quite a few years since my one semester philosophy class so I am rusty. But here's a link to what I think might contain the source for what I'm gonna talk about. (I took a cursory glance at it, but like I said it's been a few years since I read it.) http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1643_1.pdf 

 

An interesting place to look my be Princess of Elizabeth of Bohemia and correspondence she had with Rene Descartes. A basic premise of Descartes' philosophy was that if you had a clear and concise idea of something, it must be true. (Alibi this leads to circular logic since he also said that you can only have a clear and concise idea of something if it's true.)

Anyways, in their correspondence Descartes mentioned a very interesting view of free will. According to him, free will is that the will is free from having to make a choice as there's only one option. To give an analogy, if you go to the store and look at the cereal options, you have free will if the only option is Brand X. There's no choice to be made. Your will is free. Compare that to if you visit the hypothetical store and find Brand X and Brand Y. Agonizing over the choice, trying to decide, that's not a free will. (And yes, his definition of free will does not fit what we typically would call free will.)

And one of Princess Elizabeth's counterpoints was that she had a clear and concise idea of having free will, hence free will exists. (I have a feeling there's more, but that's all I recall at the moment.)

 

Figured it might interest some.

[praetorius]

For a more formal response to the original post, step (5) is the problem. I won't argue that free will is not experienced (though, I suppose I could), nor that experiences don't exist (messy to define). What is key is the difference between the reality of experiences and reality of the thing experienced. People can have experiences of extraordinary things --- divine visitations, alien abductions, paranoid conspiracies --- where there is little doubt that the person had an experience as claimed, but much doubt that the thing experienced was real.

[Knight of Cydonia]

Adding on to what @praetorius said, there's a possibility that the "free will" you experience is only an illusion, and you were always destined/pre-determined to make all the choices you think you have the freedom to make. 

[RoseGoesToYale]

But what is free will? E.g. if one of my culture's tenets is that of free will, and it has been taught to me that free will is good and desirable, then perhaps I have free will. But what if the same society has socialized me to see community service as good, so I plant flowers at the local park for free out of my own free will. Was it free will or did I do it because society rewards this behavior? Conversely, what if I decided to rip up the flowers in the park instead. Was that free will or did I do it because I'm opposing society's will, in which society has still affected my determination of what is socially acceptable or not.

 

It gets even weirder when you throw in the concept of functionalist sociology. If my role in society is to have free will, then that role has been put upon me, and thus I don't have the free will to choose my role. I could, perhaps, choose to take on a role in which I don't have free will, but then I won't have it anyway.

[Knight of Cydonia]

5 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

But what is free will? E.g. if one of my culture's tenets is that of free will, and it has been taught to me that free will is good and desirable, then perhaps I have free will. But what if the same society has socialized me to see community service as good, so I plant flowers at the local park for free out of my own free will. Was it free will or did I do it because society rewards this behavior? Conversely, what if I decided to rip up the flowers in the park instead. Was that free will or did I do it because I'm opposing society's will, in which society has still affected my determination of what is socially acceptable or not.

 

It gets even weirder when you throw in the concept of functionalist sociology. If my role in society is to have free will, then that role has been put upon me, and thus I don't have the free will to choose my role. I could, perhaps, choose to take on a role in which I don't have free will, but then I won't have it anyway.

Society doesn't grant free will. It's part of how the universe works. We may live in a deterministic universe or one where we are able to exercise free will, and I don't think we can prove which one we live in.

 

If we live in a universe where we can use free will, we always have a choice on how to behave. Society might make some choices more desirable and likely to be made than others, but importantly that still doesn't mean that the ability to make different choices is locked away from us.

[The Joker]

On 2/6/2018 at 5:04 PM, float on said:

1. hypothesis: free will doesn't exist
2. observe: the experience of free will
3. introduce: the fact that experience is one aspect of reality. 
4. it follows that experience is true, and does exist.
5. return to the observation that there is an experience of free will
6. qed. 

Assuming the laws of physics are immutable, and taking into account the fact that all effects have causes, then every function of the body is both an effect and a cause; including the mental phenomenon we humans experience. There's top down causation in mental phenomenon. Chemistry and physics helps the body come together, and consciousness emerged from the ensemble, and as a result, a thinking being came into existence. This thinking being's thought processes and will are based on the chemical and physical composition of its container, and is only able to act within the extremely large degrees of freedom this container provides. Ultimately, we don't have free will in a logical sense of the term. Physics simply doesn't allow for it. Now you can redefine what free will means, and say that free will is our capacity to accept and enjoy the decision we "made" of our own "doing". 

[binary suns]

23 hours ago, donttouchme said:

The "experience" of free will is little too subjective.

how is it any more subjective than smell? or which hobby a person prefers? or what meal they pick in a restaurant? those things are all clearly real; so to is free will. 

 

23 hours ago, donttouchme said:

You are also not free to not be yourself. I think most of that is splitting hair

heh xD yeah I'd suppose the same.... if you do something, that necessarily is a part of who you are; perhaps there is more nuance to it than "this person wanted to do that thing, and likely will again" of course, but... how a person's life can unfold is literally unlimited, and it is their actions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, everything that ultimately "etches out" who they are. 

 

@Garion

hah, that is interesting thanks for sharing! 

 

22 hours ago, praetorius said:

What is key is the difference between the reality of experiences and reality of the thing experienced.

the difference can never be proven - oh, I guess that is one more of the conditions needed to my informal proof. If there is something beyond experience, the only proof we have of its existence is that we experience it; for us, experience is as close to truth/reality as we can possibly get. (and additionally, we cannot remove experience from reality, as it is in fact a part of it - if there is more to reality than experience, there still is experience as a part of it) 

 

22 hours ago, praetorius said:

doubt that the thing experienced was real.

ah, and to elaborate on what I said in the prior paragraph: I find a statement similar to this one -

 

 intrinsically false. experience is very real; and idk exactly how to show it efficiently... but I've found that any way you try to seperate experience from reality in a way that makes some experience "falsifiable" and others "necessarily true" - it fails to actually seperate either experience from the other - that both types of experience are equally true - and so it leads to the obvious conclusion that all experience is true, real. 

 

19 hours ago, Knight of Cydonia said:

Adding on to what @praetorius said, there's a possibility that the "free will" you experience is only an illusion, and you were always destined/pre-determined to make all the choices you think you have the freedom to make. 

careful.. this is exactly the common argument against free will that I'm disproving if we assume that what you've said is true... well, follow the steps in the OP to realize that free will remains existent; perhaps with a different context that what initially imagined; but yet, free will remains true. If free will is false, it is still experienced - and what is experienced is never false. 

 

3 hours ago, The Joker said:

Assuming the laws of physics are immutable, and taking into account the fact that all effects have causes, then every function of the body is both an effect and a cause; including the mental phenomenon we humans experience. There's top down causation in mental phenomenon. Chemistry and physics helps the body come together, and consciousness emerged from the ensemble, and as a result, a thinking being came into existence. This thinking being's thought processes and will are based on the chemical and physical composition of its container, and is only able to act within the extremely large degrees of freedom this container provides. Ultimately, we don't have free will in a logical sense of the term. Physics simply doesn't allow for it. Now you can redefine what free will means, and say that free will is our capacity to accept and enjoy the decision we "made" of our own "doing". 

wait.. but you were doing so well.. and then you missed your own point with every function of the body having an effect and a cause; if the effect is the expereince of free will, then there is something that caused it - which makes free will true and real. instead, you fell for the fallacy I'm trying to expose: that somehow by explaining and predicting a thing, that thing disappears and becomes false.... if it were true that free will became false just because there is a predictable cause for its effect, than the same could be explained of gravity; so if free will is false, then hurricane dynamics is nothing but belief as well. laughter is just an illusion, sound waved don't actually exist; if we say that explaining and predicting free will disproves it, then we disprove all of science and all of reality out of existence. 

 

[binary suns]

@RoseGoesToYale

 

 oh huh, wait, very novel there - oh, what is it we're dancing around with your post... *thinking cap needed*

 

 

 

11 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

But what is free will? E.g. if one of my culture's tenets is that of free will, and it has been taught to me that free will is good and desirable, then perhaps I have free will. But what if the same society has socialized me to see community service as good, so I plant flowers at the local park for free out of my own free will. Was it free will or did I do it because society rewards this behavior? Conversely, what if I decided to rip up the flowers in the park instead. Was that free will or did I do it because I'm opposing society's will, in which society has still affected my determination of what is socially acceptable or not.

 

It gets even weirder when you throw in the concept of functionalist sociology. If my role in society is to have free will, then that role has been put upon me, and thus I don't have the free will to choose my role. I could, perhaps, choose to take on a role in which I don't have free will, but then I won't have it anyway.

"cultures tenets is free will" - this is very interesting 'cause... if one does not buy into the idea of free will... does that intrinsically make it untrue? if they do not experience free will... but instead experience "determined fate and nothing more"... hm... so interesting. That, some people do have true free will.. and others do not... and the only difference is whether they believe it  this inherently would lead to the truth that faith = truth and truth = faith

 

 

regarding coding dismantling an act... while this inherently does not destroy my proposed logic, the way you state it is bugging me in some way... something you're capturing that hasn't yet been brought up.... well, oh! it's to divorce the question of free will from existing, into the question of "how does free will exist" that's it! hah, that's interesting too! I only prove that it exists. but, I do not prove how it exists! that is completely open to debate and interpretation xD 

 

 

 

and, oooh.. in that last bit... about whether a person accepts or rejects a cultural expectation... but that is what makes a person an individual. does individuality equate to free will, or is it independent of it?

 

all very interesting... a lot to consider! I don't really have an answer to those three nuances. I wonder? 

[praetorius]

1 hour ago, float on said:

the difference can never be proven - oh, I guess that is one more of the conditions needed to my informal proof. If there is something beyond experience, the only proof we have of its existence is that we experience it; for us, experience is as close to truth/reality as we can possibly get. (and additionally, we cannot remove experience from reality, as it is in fact a part of it - if there is more to reality than experience, there still is experience as a part of it) 

 

On 2/6/2018 at 6:27 PM, praetorius said:

doubt that the thing experienced was real.

ah, and to elaborate on what I said in the prior paragraph: I find a statement similar to this one -

 

 intrinsically false. experience is very real; and idk exactly how to show it efficiently... but I've found that any way you try to seperate experience from reality in a way that makes some experience "falsifiable" and others "necessarily true" - it fails to actually seperate either experience from the other - that both types of experience are equally true - and so it leads to the obvious conclusion that all experience is true, real. 

 

I agree that experience may be "as close as we can get," and trying to discern some more true basis for reality leads to unprovable gobbledygook. However, "as close as we can get" isn't close enough to claim "proof free will exists"; at best, you can prove that we couldn't tell either way.

 

Perhaps if experience were unanimously in favor of free will, this would be a compelling argument. However, alongside experiential evidence for free will existing, there is also much evidence against. On the more abstract and theoretical side, there's the whole chain  of experiences indicating how will is the product of deterministic electrochemical interactions which don't leave much room for "freedom" in the chain of causality. I don't think this is a particularly good argument against free will, since emergent phenomenon in complex systems are worthy of consideration in their own right without crude reductionism. But, there is a second kind of more personal experiential evidence, acutely felt by anyone struggling with addiction or mental health issues. Without taking a little pill each night, my will doesn't seem free to answer "would you rather live or die" in the way I might "freely will" it to. The human mind seems quite susceptible to being held captive by irritating little electrochemical imbalances which can overcome the strongest will.

[Ace of Mind]

On 2/6/2018 at 8:04 PM, float on said:

1. hypothesis: free will doesn't exist
2. observe: the experience of free will
3. introduce: the fact that experience is one aspect of reality. 
4. it follows that experience is true, and does exist.
5. return to the observation that there is an experience of free will
6. qed. 

I think you forgot the negation elimination of 1.)  that should be in between 5.) and 6.)

 

Sorry, I just had a class in formal logic so now I'm bothered by everything

[Knight of Cydonia]

7 hours ago, float on said:

if we assume that what you've said is true... well, follow the steps in the OP to realize that free will remains existent; perhaps with a different context that what initially imagined; but yet, free will remains true. If free will is false, it is still experienced - and what is experienced is never false. 

I might have a dream while I'm sleeping that I can fly, and "experience" flight. But when I wake up of course I realize it was all just a dream, and I'm not going to go around telling everyone that I can fly. But according to your argument, because I "experienced flight", it must be true that I literally flew? Am I understanding that correctly?

 

In a more general sense, I disagree that things that feel true to an individual means they are true. The things someone sees while tripping on LSD may feel real to them, but to any outside observer they are obviously not. In my mind there is a clear difference between personal "truth" and universal truth. And when discussing free will vs. determinism, I believe whichever kind of universe we live in should be a universal truth.

 

Ignoring the above two points - how are you so sure that everyone experiences free will? What if, for example, I were to decide that what I experience is not free will, but rather life in a deterministic universe that is pulling all the strings? Would my experience thus mean there is no free will, just because that's my experience? Because now we run into a contradiction - after all, apparently what is experienced is never false, and one person is saying they experience free will yet another is saying they experience determinism. So which is it? Both cannot exist at the same time, unless you argue that the truth of their reality is specific to only them . But, importantly, that is not the same as it being the truth universally.

[Nevyn]

Does it really matter if there's free will or if everything is deterministic? The reason why there's so much debate is because we can't tell the difference anyway. Pretty much everything in our society is based on there being free will though because otherwise how can you punish people for doing something they had no control over? If there's not at least the illusion of free will then we're all just going through the motions and everything is really meaningless.

[The Joker]

23 hours ago, float on said:

how is it any more subjective than smell? or which hobby a person prefers? or what meal they pick in a restaurant? those things are all clearly real; so to is free will. 

 

heh xD yeah I'd suppose the same.... if you do something, that necessarily is a part of who you are; perhaps there is more nuance to it than "this person wanted to do that thing, and likely will again" of course, but... how a person's life can unfold is literally unlimited, and it is their actions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, everything that ultimately "etches out" who they are. 

 

@Garion

hah, that is interesting thanks for sharing! 

 

the difference can never be proven - oh, I guess that is one more of the conditions needed to my informal proof. If there is something beyond experience, the only proof we have of its existence is that we experience it; for us, experience is as close to truth/reality as we can possibly get. (and additionally, we cannot remove experience from reality, as it is in fact a part of it - if there is more to reality than experience, there still is experience as a part of it) 

 

ah, and to elaborate on what I said in the prior paragraph: I find a statement similar to this one -

 

 intrinsically false. experience is very real; and idk exactly how to show it efficiently... but I've found that any way you try to seperate experience from reality in a way that makes some experience "falsifiable" and others "necessarily true" - it fails to actually seperate either experience from the other - that both types of experience are equally true - and so it leads to the obvious conclusion that all experience is true, real. 

 

careful.. this is exactly the common argument against free will that I'm disproving if we assume that what you've said is true... well, follow the steps in the OP to realize that free will remains existent; perhaps with a different context that what initially imagined; but yet, free will remains true. If free will is false, it is still experienced - and what is experienced is never false. 

 

wait.. but you were doing so well.. and then you missed your own point with every function of the body having an effect and a cause; if the effect is the expereince of free will, then there is something that caused it - which makes free will true and real. instead, you fell for the fallacy I'm trying to expose: that somehow by explaining and predicting a thing, that thing disappears and becomes false.... if it were true that free will became false just because there is a predictable cause for its effect, than the same could be explained of gravity; so if free will is false, then hurricane dynamics is nothing but belief as well. laughter is just an illusion, sound waved don't actually exist; if we say that explaining and predicting free will disproves it, then we disprove all of science and all of reality out of existence. 

 

You're not making any sense at all, because I never said that a conscious sense of freedom doesn't exist, because it does (hell I'm alive). What I said is that the underlying physical mechanisms and systems that contribute to and sustain the existence of this conscious sense of free will is inherently mechanical and deterministic. Ultimately there were only so many choices we could've made to begin with, and indeed we feel as if those decisions were ours to make all along ,and no amount of thought experiments can change that sense of self-agency, but the fact is, free will as you're describing simply doesn't exist. Like I said, you can redefine free will on a philosophical and personal level to mean accepting the "fate" nature has dealt us, or just not even think about the fact that we really don't have free will.

 

By the way explaining and predicting a thing doesn't make it disappear, quite the contrary it normally causes elucidation of the phenomenon, especially if its done through scientific means. The only thing that has disappeared is the sense of magic associated with things that aren't very well understood by the layman such as consciousness, or in this instance free will. The phenomenon of consciousness and all the faculties thereof still exist, but they were molded and shaped by a deterministic physical world, and dance to that tune accordingly.

 

What you are saying though is that because we sense we have free will, then free will is objectively true, and that's not the case at all, because what we sense isn't necessarily reflective of reality as it actually is. We have lots of sense data, and most of hte time the sense data fits together, but its definitely fallible, in fact its extremely fallible. But, aside from the fact that its not really grounded in the deterministic nature of the universe, you are right, we do experience a conscious sense of free will, but that's all it is.

[Nevyn]

I believe otherwise. Free will exists it just mixes with everyone and everything else. A person may not be able to change all of the circumstance of their life but they can make decisions that change the course of their life in significant ways. I could move to a different city, take a different job, join the French Foreign Legion, etc and then make those things happen myself. I believe free will exists because I can exercise enough of it to change things. That's good enough for me.

[binary suns]

22 hours ago, Ace of Mind said:

I think you forgot the negation elimination of 1.)  that should be in between 5.) and 6.)

 

Sorry, I just had a class in formal logic so now I'm bothered by everything

I skipped it on purpose I guess that was sloppy. But that point was so obvious, I thought it'd be redundant to put it in... but you are correct in fact  

 

23 hours ago, praetorius said:

However, "as close as we can get" isn't close enough to claim "proof free will exists"; at best, you can prove that we couldn't tell either way.

I think you're still missing the point that experience is true reality. experience of free will is reality. maybe we can't tell either way; but it exists either way; either way is just different between a "sixth sense" type of thing or an "actual meaningful level of choice and control" type of thing. but both options are true and real. 

...there could be other ways of free will too that could be true... but my theorem is, that assuming our body's capability to measure the world is true - whether or not there is true world we actually do literally measure - then necessarily, free will, being one of these measurements, is true. - Whether or not there is free will existent beyond the experience of it, the experience itself is true and is free will. I do also, in fact, postulate that this truth is in fact true existence as well, that without something to measure, the measurement is just as true as what could be measured. however, I do not prove that aspect - I only support it - I take I believe three postulates to prove that free will does in fact exist - and then I re-use one of those postulates to further postulate that free will's truth is also synonymous with what can only be presumed truth - aka the world beyond our measurements. the only truth we can prove is that we experience - and any truth beyond experience is only a matter of faith. 

 

17 hours ago, Knight of Cydonia said:

I might have a dream while I'm sleeping that I can fly, and "experience" flight. But when I wake up of course I realize it was all just a dream, and I'm not going to go around telling everyone that I can fly. But according to your argument, because I "experienced flight", it must be true that I literally flew? Am I understanding that correctly?

hmmmm... well, I would not say that your experience of flight was precisely the same as being wakeful and going up into the air with flight. but it was still true flight - why would you go and experience flight in your dream, and then upon waking say, "oh no, that wasn't really flight at all!" of course it was flight. just because you dreamed it - don't make it false. You do look to not let your nightdreams be a factor as you predict the wakeful experience. But you didn't not experience flight in your dreams. you DID experience flight in your dreams. See lol... it's self-evident. you've stated you flew in your dreams. so it's true that you flew. the fact that it was a nightdream or a memory or a daydream doesn't change the truth of the experience. 

 

 

17 hours ago, Knight of Cydonia said:

I disagree that things that feel true to an individual means they are true.

I mean I'm sure I'd be careless and say it this way but... seeing it stated, I see that it's misleading to say it this way. experience does not dictate that there is reality beyond experience. things that feel true are true. but I wouldn't say that things feeling true means they are true. the nuance is - that in the first sentence, "they are true" is "experience is true" but in the second sentence, "they are true" means "what is assumed about reality based on experience is true" - and we can never prove that truth. we only think we can but we can't. The only reliable, provable truth, is the truth of experience. beyond experience - we only have more experience supporting our assumptions - we never have any hard evidence. If you build a machine that tries to measure light and it very consistently measures light the wrong way, you'll say, "look, it's consistent!" but it's consistently wrong - since all we have is experience, we can never actually compare the "Truth" of reality to what our experience measures to be sure we got it accurate. we can only say that it's precise. The truth of experience is true in accuracy, because it is itself, and can't not-be, but sometimes can be imprecise - even when I walk about the day sometimes my eyes play tricks on me. but the truth of what is beyond experience can never be accurate. we can make our assumptions and models about what is beyond experience more and more precise - but because we can only measure that model against the very tool that created it, we can never have any idea of how accurate our theories and models are. 

 

So... in fact.... there is no truth beyond experience no wait, that one's just as trustable as its negative. hehe. like was said... was it you? ah, yes, " at best, you can prove that we couldn't tell either way." - experience is necessarily true. and so free will is necessarily true. but the assumptions we make upon our experience - which the majority of folks consider truth - actually is in fact, "at best, we can't prove it either way" - aka, faith. But... that's beside the point of this thread the point of this thread is that experience, and free will, are both very true and real. they can't not be. "I think therefore I am" basically

 

[binary suns]

13 hours ago, Nevyn said:

Does it really matter if there's free will or if everything is deterministic? The reason why there's so much debate is because we can't tell the difference anyway. 

it matters - because when one understands that free will is necessarily true, suddenly they no longer suffer over whether or not anything matters. when free will is true, then everything matters! 

 

I say this post purely subjectively, of course. I do not know what others experience, for I do not experience it.  But for me, when I realized that free will was necessarily true.. choice became meaningful to me, without a doubt, consistently. I think that's pretty novel and meaningful

 

[binary suns]

13 hours ago, Nevyn said:

because otherwise how can you punish people for doing something they had no control over? If there's not at least the illusion of free will then we're all just going through the motions and everything is really meaningless.

this I'll seperate into a different post 'cause it's... well it's going on a tangent, but you seem concerned about it... so here is the tldr of what I think about this topic: 

 

if it is determined that a criminal will comit the crime. then it is also dertermined that the offended criticise, judge, punish, and ostracize the criminal to an extent appropriate to the crime.

 

(appropriate meaning, situational but predictable - if they lied, then people modify their behavior to trust others over him - but if he murdered, people want nothing to do with him....  I wish I knew a better word than "appropriate" to represent that, without implying fair, just, or right)

 

(and of course, my proposed theorem is that it ain't determined... although come to think of it, the nuance of that isn't directly addressed, even tho I do believe it is covered... it just isn't obvious... that, there is more to "determined" than just "is it or isn't it free will" - because we can have deterministic free will - which actually that's pretty much what @Garion was sharing from descartes's philosophy)

[binary suns]

5 hours ago, The Joker said:

What I said is that the underlying physical mechanisms and systems that contribute to and sustain the existence of this conscious sense of free will is inherently mechanical and deterministic.

careful! that is as true as it is that a hurricane is deterministic. we postulate and assume that it is, but - we sure as H. can't predict a huricane, nor the precision decisions of a single person - not even ourselves. You are assuming that the theory that choice is mechanical is the same as reality that it's mechanical. theory is only faith. I guess we both agree that that faith is real.. but let's not get carried away and say that what we have faith in is exactly as our faith expects it to be

 

5 hours ago, The Joker said:

The only thing that has disappeared is the sense of magic

eh, I beg to differ! things become more magical when I understand them

 

tho, I guess, there is a difference in the magic in the trusted versus the magic in the predicted. they are different magical moments xD 

 

5 hours ago, The Joker said:

What you are saying though is that because we sense we have free will, then free will is objectively true,

 if I said truth is objective then I must apologize for that is not my theory at all. I'm very very convinced that truth is necessarily subjective. if I take the subjective vantage that is my witness of my experience, in that length truth is objective... but when I look to that truth, I notice, huh, there is a lot of evidence that there could possibly be more to existence than just my truth. And so I trust, quite adamantly, that my truth is only subjective truth - and likewise, that any objective truth can only be relatively measured - making all measured truth objective.

 

unless you've got something other than experience in your existence, I guarantee you are the same  

 

5 hours ago, The Joker said:

that's all it is.

exactly  or... well.. that's the extent we can claim as true with sound validity  

 

 

 

[The Joker]

21 hours ago, float on said:

careful! that is as true as it is that a hurricane is deterministic. we postulate and assume that it is, but - we sure as H. can't predict a huricane, nor the precision decisions of a single person - not even ourselves. You are assuming that the theory that choice is mechanical is the same as reality that it's mechanical. theory is only faith. I guess we both agree that that faith is real.. but let's not get carried away and say that what we have faith in is exactly as our faith expects it to be

 

eh, I beg to differ! things become more magical when I understand them

 

tho, I guess, there is a difference in the magic in the trusted versus the magic in the predicted. they are different magical moments xD 

 

 if I said truth is objective then I must apologize for that is not my theory at all. I'm very very convinced that truth is necessarily subjective. if I take the subjective vantage that is my witness of my experience, in that length truth is objective... but when I look to that truth, I notice, huh, there is a lot of evidence that there could possibly be more to existence than just my truth. And so I trust, quite adamantly, that my truth is only subjective truth - and likewise, that any objective truth can only be relatively measured - making all measured truth objective.

 

unless you've got something other than experience in your existence, I guarantee you are the same  

 

exactly  or... well.. that's the extent we can claim as true with sound validity  

 

 

 

Something clearly exists, though you cannot use deductive logic to fundamentally prove a statement about reality and set it in stone. You're right, we receive all we know about the world through sense data, and we cannot be logically rigorous with that, but we can get the next best thing, which is science. It relies on inductive reasoning, but its falsifiable, and predictions are normally made on sound assumptions and evidence (theory). One thing is certain though, and logically certain at that, and that is that I exist. I cannot doubt the veracity of that claim. So, starting from there, we draw up some first principles based on analyzing one's own experiences. So, my sense data may not be reflecting reality as it actually is, but, since the sense data I receive is consistent and coherent, then we can pick apart the experiences we have of the "outside" world and make some reasonably grounded assumptions about what really is "out there" beyond ourselves. 

 

It is true that we cannot predict when a hurricane will happen perfectly, but we could predict the probability of a hurricane if we had more knowledge on the initial conditions that lead to it. Due to physical constraints we cannot perfectly predict things with any reasonable model, but we can apply a probability to it, and this is exactly what quantum mechanics is based in, probability of certain physical states/outcomes occurring under a given condition. I guess my biggest point is, pyrrhonian skepticism isn't intellectually helpful, because I think that all we can know about reality is correlations and relationships between objects and phenomenon. We cannot peer deeper because there isn't a way for us to present information that "describes" what a thing actually is. We can describe the neural correlates of consciousness all we want, but can you put your own sense of existence into words? Can you draw up some mathematical or logical statements that cements the reality of your existence and give it as much substance as the real thing? No, because reality, for lack of a better way to phrase it, seems to either consist, or wholly is a thing in-itself. 

 

On a side note, I did not mean to imply anything special about consciousness at all, on the contrary I just meant that the way we abstractly draw up systems of thought and reasoning is wholly inadequate when it actually comes to describing what reality "is" (whatever that means).

 

 

[The Joker]

22 hours ago, float on said:

it matters - because when one understands that free will is necessarily true, suddenly they no longer suffer over whether or not anything matters. when free will is true, then everything matters! 

 

I say this post purely subjectively, of course. I do not know what others experience, for I do not experience it.  But for me, when I realized that free will was necessarily true.. choice became meaningful to me, without a doubt, consistently. I think that's pretty novel and meaningful

 

I think choice is meaningful by default. Humans always make meaningful choices based on the emotional state they have. They are compelled to act, and this sorta shows that free will isn't as it appears to be. For me, I try to define things within a certain context. I don't dream about humanity ever reaching the starts for instance, because i find the concept absurd. The context of my life is akin to that of an animal. I was born, raised, and I function within a social unit (begrudgingly most of the time), and the rest of my life is lined out within the scope of that very simple fact. The trivialities of existence, such as the fact that bad shit always happens for no reason, or that the universe is so big when there seems to be no real logical reason for its existence... what could they mean to an animal such as myself? 

 

So, choice, when "brought down to Earth" for lack of a better phrase, is my acceptance of what I do with my life in what limited capacity I possess. I guess I just leave philosophy for the birds lol, because philosophy has done for me what its original intent (to the Greeks) was; and that was to teach me how to lead a good life for myself. And I did just that by learning and grappling with conundrums like this, letting it get to me, then just tossing it aside and realizing that that shit never mattered, and the only thing I can do with myself is walk forward and seize the few opportunities the world presented to a normal human like me to grow.

 

That's just my view of my own life, I understand everyone sees it differently (and they should).