Welcome to my intelligence

[Blair]

What's good work about that?

Pye has simply revealed again that her understanding of causality is anthropomorphic, crude and grossly incomplete.

[Carl G]

Enlighten us, prince!

Instead of just grousing...

[Pye]

.

For instance, such a thought as "I will become enlightened only if I am caused to be [and it will not be my conscious doing]" is simply a transferred prayer from a god to a process. God willing, I will become enlightened, and the human will can then go back to sleep, give over, wish and wait, for human willing is too messy, too shoot-and-miss, and for the final shut-down, has no existence in-itself and the direction of its conscious processes is out of the particular human's hands. Humans have been ducking their painfully awakening, isolating, consciousness for an evolutionary age, passing the growth of their for-itself consciousness off on god, and now handing it off to the processes of the science. Same prayer; different house of worship. And more reneging on the self-generated and self-directed growth of consciousness.



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[Carl G]

I think that is a good point to raise, Pye.

I, for one, do believe in will, call it free will, defined not as willy-nilly will, but as the possibility of self-directed cause. Call it non-inherent, I don't care, it is still effect-tive.

[Sapius]

James,

Yep, take your time and if you don't feel like responding because you are not getting value out of what I say, then don't.

I 'value' every jot or title that I experience, and if I happen to engage in a conversation, I never leave it without any clear indication otherwise; discussing with you will be no exception.

The thing is I went through this general idea from scratch, so I have all that background in memory.

I can relate to that because all that come to any personal understandings begin from the point where they have dismantled the old, and see a whole new big picture of a jigsaw puzzle they have put together. But, to others it may still seem that some individual pieces do not fit since they seem contradictory, but since you may have removed the contradiction in those particular pieces, the big picture would make perfect sense to you.

I feel ownership. Whether this ownership is just plain old ego distorting the importance or rationality of my theory, or not, is something that I continue to ask myself. I just continue to value it, because of it's generic application to any issue.

That’s beside the point, although in time I think you shall see that your own theory will show you that “ownership” is irrelevant, essentially.

I’ll be back! And you shall see that our words may be different, but much of it means the same. I still have to read that other link of yours.

[David Quinn]

Pye,

DQ: It doesn't resemble my experience of the world. What is an example of an "origin of agency"?

P: You.

My causes tell me otherwise.

It does not matter that you do not exist inherently (really, we must get over this god-wishing).

How does rationally understanding that all things lack inherent existence equate with god-wishing?

Your consciousness - in addition to being the dutiful participant and executor of effects - also possesses the for-itself quality that every human consciousness possesses. Not in-itself, which is the expression of inherency, but for-itself, as in the expression of agency. This is the everyday experience of every human, all things converge in the human and cause the human to act for-itself, and in this moment, it would be in error to declare this agency a mere cosmic toggle-switch. For a thing for-itself has just stepped outside of pure mechanism and become one of those "extra" things.

Prince was right to call this anthropomorphism. It is a variation of the old Christian theme of thinking that the earth, and themselves, are at the centre of the universe.

When a cloud decides to rain, is it acting above and beyond the causal realm? Or is it simply following its own nature, as dictated by its causes? We really must give up this anthropomorphic idea that we are somehow more special and unique than everything in the Universe.

No one is denying that people subjectively experience their will as being free. What is being denied, however, is the idea that it really is free of Nature's causal processes. The underlying causal processes of our thoughts and decisions, which are countless, are for the most part hidden from our view. But they are there nonetheless, and they formulate every thought and decision we have.

If we really want to pin-point the origin of agency with respect to our thoughts and decisions, we would have to look towards our larger self, which is Nature. The decisions we make at this very moment were originally formulated in the furthest reaches of the beginningless past. To put it poetically, every decision we make is really God's decision.

Mechanistic cause and effect - called hard determinism, or even "vulgar" determinism - is description of past patterns, like science is, and is involved largely in the business of describing the world as it has played out, and then predicting how the world might yet play out in future events.

No determinist worth his salt would ever conceive of determinism in this way. It is cartoon determinism which you are describing here.

Understanding determinism as a philosophic principle has nothing to do with recognizing patterns in nature or making predictions about the future. It also has nothing to with reducing events to billiard-ball style mechanics.

I addressed this particular delusion in Wisdom of the Infinite, so rather repeat myself, I will refer you there:

The Endless Variety of Causal Processes

When I speak of causation, I am not really referring to the old 19th century materialistic view which imagines that causation is nothing more than a series of billiard ball-type interactions. Rather, I am referring to something broader and deeper. Billiard ball-type interactions are certainly part of the realm of causation, but not the extent of it. How can one speak of billiard balls when one is dealing with the purely abstract realm of the imagination, for example? Or the process of logical thought? It is important to broaden one’s conception of causation until it includes all phenomena in the Universe. Otherwise, one will continue to create arbitrary realms of non-causation, which can only lead to unnecessary confusion.

It all depends on what is meant by "billiard ball-type causation", of course. If it refers to every kind of physical interaction in the Universe, then yes, everything is a product of billiard ball-type causation. Thought, for example, is a product of physical interactions in the brain and therefore can be placed within a broad enough definition of billiard-ball causation. It does not really matter how you choose to categorize these things as long as you know what you are doing. Problems only arise when people start unconsciously narrowing the scope of causation to those processes which are obviously mechanical, linear and billiard ball-like in nature. They then scratch their heads and wonder what to do with a phenomenon such as thought, or love, or religious experiences, or complex non-linear processes - only to proclaim them as inherently mysterious and incapable of explanation, not realizing that it was they who falsely created the mystery by arbitrarily moving them outside the realm of causation.

Again, the important point is that one needs to broaden one’s conception of causation so that it necessarily includes everything that could possibly exist. If that means abandoning narrower conceptions of causation, then so be it. In the end, the affirmation of the principle of causation only requires one thing from us - namely, the recognition that nothing can arise without any cause whatsoever. That is all that is needed. It does not require us to affirm or reject particular models of causation. It does not require us to reject non-linear dynamics or quantum phenomena or mystical experiences from the causal realm. All of these things involve causation in one form or another. While it is true that it is almost impossible to describe the behaviour of these complex phenomena with the old classical models of causation inherited from 19th century physics, it doesn’t really mean anything. All it means is that those particular models are limited in their scope. It does not change the fact that these phenomena, like all phenomena in the Universe, always follow the age-old process of things being generated by causal conditions.

In the end, causation can have an infinite number of forms. There are no rules for it to abide by. How it is expressed in any given moment depends entirely on what happens to exist in that moment. If billiard balls exist, then causation will be expressed in a classical, billiard ball-like fashion. If a quantum void exists, then causation will be expressed in the usual quantum fashion. But no matter how it is expressed, there is always a common element which runs through them all - namely, that nothing can arise without cause.

In order to make your point, Pye, and create metaphysical room for your free-will, you necessarily have to reduce the concept of determinism to a gaunt caricature. But in doing this, you are blocking out the reality of your infinite nature.

How can a person hope to open up to the wisdom of the Infinite, if he is going to continue clogging up his mind with anthropomorphic deadwood?

Cause and effect, splendid in its universal scope, does not describe the total depths of human experience.

It does if you refrain from reducing cause and effect to a gaunt caricature.

I know of no conscious person who experiences themselves as mechanistic cause-and-effect. If they did, they could not say so, from such a state of unconsciousness as mechanistic cause-and-effect would be.

There's that gaunt caricature again.

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[Pye]

.

David, you are having a shadow debate with the traditional form of this argument, and not apprehending the content I presented here. When I write will; you see "free" in front of it. When I'm speaking of a very existential condition for conscious organic life; you are seeing metaphysics. When I speak of conscious human agency; you are seeing religion. When I speak of the gestalt of organic experience that cause and effect has wrought; you think I have offended its laws. And you "protect" characterizations of cause and effect much like metaphysicians do their gods.

Until you are able to recognize the content of my discourse over the form of the traditional debate, I would have to nurse you through these binary knee-jerks or be about the business of repetition, and it is not my wont to do either.



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[David Quinn]

Pye,

David, you are having a shadow debate with the traditional form of this argument, and not apprehending the content I presented here. When I write will; you see "free" in front of it. When I'm speaking of a very existential condition for conscious organic life; you are seeing metaphysics.

No, I saw you indulge in metaphysics in your previous posts, and now I am seeing someone who is pretending they didn't.

You essentially stated that cause and effect wasn't sufficient to explain certain things, which was a metaphysical comment. If you want to talk about about existential matters, then talk about them. There is no need to bring cause and effect or any other metaphysical matter into it.

When I speak of conscious human agency; you are seeing religion.

To the degree that you try to drag this "human conscious agency" outside the causal realm, to that degree you are indulging in religion. Why not simply accept that human consciousness is part of the larger causal flow of Nature and talk about it on that basis? Why does talking about existential matters require you to become irrational?

I think I have a good idea why you need to do this. You like to think of yourself as a unique individual. Acknowledging the reality of cause and effect seems to wipe away all that uniqueness. It seems to dissolve everything into the same causal process. Cause and effect is seen as a threat. Thus, it has to be pushed aside in order to make room for your own existential uniqueness.

But properly understood, cause and effect doesn't wipe away uniqueness at all. On the contrary, it confirms the uniqueness of all things.

When I speak of the gestalt of organic experience that cause and effect has wrought; you think I have offended its laws. And you "protect" characterizations of cause and effect much like metaphysicians do their gods.

I am protecting an important stepping stone to wisdom.

Until you are able to recognize the content of my discourse over the form of the traditional debate, I would have to nurse you through these binary knee-jerks or be about the business of repetition, and it is not my wont to do either.

If you stop engaging in irrational metaphysical discourse, then I will stop pulling you up on it.

The real question is, are you able to talk about the things that you want to talk about without violating truth? If you can do that, I will have no problem with you.

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[Blair]

Enlighten us, prince!

Instead of just grousing...

I'm not interested in enlightening anyone. And if I was, I wouldn't be focusing on a cheeky little prat like you.

[Sapius]

James,

Besides the other detailed explanation in the ‘Robot thread’, your quote below is already quite adequate and simple enough to get a bigger picture of what you are saying.

Picture that a cube shaped spatial hole of nothingness suddenly appears anywhere in empty space (ignore for the time being that nothingness is an illogical concept in terms of reality). There is the phrase “Nature abhors a vacuum”, so the surrounding space will attempt to immediately fill this hole. To do so it would have to somehow stretch out. Space is space only, not something else, so it would have to expand to fill the hole.

Now the problem here is that we are just looking at it from one perspective, there exists an opposite equally valid perspective, namely that the hole itself has the power to draw in the surrounding space. The very nothingness of the hole is a causal agent. It has to be because if there was no hole, there would be no cause for the surrounding space to expand.

Which of these perspectives is correct? – Each perspective taken alone is not, but taken both they are. The nature of everything is dualistic in this fashion.

I don’t need to discuss in details each and every other point you made over there, but this is how I have been seeing existence too. That nature of existence is dualistic, otherwise nothing would exist.

So lets consider discussing your post here.

Sap: And your view seems to suggest that ‘cause’ is some kind of external force that acts upon something that it is not. Why can’t it be that the process is imbedded within each and every thing itself?

Jms: The process is not imbedded within each and every thing, but is the entirety of each and every thing.

Let me put this in your own words then; "Which of these perspectives is correct? – Each perspective taken alone is not, but taken both they are." I am just trying to show you the same logic.

D: Effects/things are empty of their own inherent nature.

J: “Effects/things are empty of their own inherent beginning and of anything truly physical”.

Both these statements are meaningless individually unless the other perspective is also stated. Things may be (or are) empty of their own inherent nature, but they are not inherently empty of the comparatively sensed nature of the very same thing, otherwise, we would not be aware of its non-inherent nature as seen through change.

A thing only has existence for whatever has been defined as a whole. If broken into parts then the parts themselves become individual wholes/effects/things.

Hence, there is actually no end to things, no matter however deep we go. I take it you already actually know and remember– “The nature of everything is dualistic in this fashion.”

The thing about things is that if you keep dividing the thing into smaller and smaller parts, you will eventually find nothing – the thing will be empty of any type of true underlying physical entity.

Eventually find nothing? Are you sure of that? Do you mean to say that things when broken down into parts, that become whole/effects/things, cease to be so after certain point of detection? How can there be an end to duality? It has to necessarily be infinite in that direction too, unless there is an end to it.

Sap: Maybe things change things

Jms: Things do change other things, and other things change the thing in question.

Yes, that is what I mean.

Consider two magnets; does the –ve attract the +ve, or the +ve attract the –ve? Certain properties are causally created for a particular thing, and that goes for each and every thing, and then that thing… in your own words… literally “competes with the rest of the totality” so to speak, (that's where "will" steps in) although the thing is non-inherent in and of its self. IT is, though a non-inherent thing, alive as a form that can produce other effects based on its causally created nature as that particular form. Any form, is not empty in that sense.

Change is nothing more than things bonding and dismantling infinitely due to the balancing and unbalancing act of a dynamic movement of forces that are imbedded in things, down to the infinitum of the minutest realm where duality would be necessary, and hence things still have to necessarily be. There is no point that is empty of duality; hence there are always things that act upon each other, ad infinitum, in every which dimensional direction.

In your example of a vacuum having the force to suck in space, if it does have the force/power to suck in, then that vacuum is a thing too. Not an absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Sap: I don’t see any such “force” called causality ‘acting upon’ any thing, for it is not some-thing that could be apart from things itself.

Jms: There is no inherent force that is causality. Rather causality occurs because of the interaction of two underlying forces that vary in strength of power in any particular spatial domain.

OK, where is it that these “forces” actually lie? The two forces that you say “underlie”, are within a thing, because what we perceive as a thing, is not ever a ONE whole thing, even beyond any perceivable quantum level. There is always at least TWO, duality, yin and yang, which you already know. So there is never an “external” thing happening, it is all from within a thing to a thing, and a particular thing can never ever actually be a ONE SOLID THING and exist.

To be honest Sap, I think you, of all the people on the forum, are most liekly to be able understand what I am getting at with the Contracting and Expansion forces theory.

Trust me, that is nothing new, and I understand it in all its consistency, but say philosophically.