GENIUS FORUMS

I came across this basic argument attributed to British philosopher Galen Strawson

• • We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are.
  
  • In order to be ultimately responsible for what we do, we have to be ultimately responsible for what we are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
  
  • But we cannot, as the first point avers, be ultimately responsible for what we are, because, simply, we are what we are; we cannot be causa sui.
  
  • Therefore, we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do.

Seems to be the basic argument and I find no refutations of this basic argument.

Anyway, thought I'd share, it is quite commone sense in its formulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson

This interview makes for pretty interesting reading.

That's a really interesting interview Dan, thanks for that.


I find elements of the interview that smacked of biblical scripture as well, though most of it was couched in Buddhism, or I'm misreading the Bible.

The most interesting part of that discussion was about the feeling that we have free-will. For me personally, when I am making a decision I have a feeling that I am going to be held responsible for my decision, more so than the feeling that I am 'ultimately' responsible. Maybe I am an odd one, but I can't understand this first-hand account of genuine free-will. It has never been a prominent feeling for me, in general I've had an aversion to certain decisions knowing that I will suffer consequences.

I suppose this is probably what differs with psychopathy. I don't consider myself a florid psychopath but I have identified some elements of my mind which lean in that direction, away from the norm and perhaps this is one of those incidences. Alternatively, maybe people who have this feeling of genuine freedom aren't very keen observers.

Animus,

Maybe I am an odd one, but I can't understand this first-hand account of genuine free-will. It has never been a prominent feeling for me, in general I've had an aversion to certain decisions knowing that I will suffer consequences.

Same goes for me, so you are not the only one.

Alright, here is a short vid I made on Free-Will Impossibilism using Strawson-like arguments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8sY73MzIN8

I gotta get a handle on this video stuff, it took me 3 audio attempts and still get the popping sound and monotoneness, plus it took me 2 days to edit 3 mins of video! lol

Animus, your voice sounds way too monotone in that video. You almost put me to sleep.

You may want to practice some more. Dan may be able to give you some advice -- he's got this voice recording thing down quite well by now. His voice is very emotional without sounding gay.

Animus wrote:Alright, here is a short vid I made on Free-Will Impossibilism using Strawson-like arguments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8sY73MzIN8

I gotta get a handle on this video stuff, it took me 3 audio attempts and still get the popping sound and monotoneness, plus it took me 2 days to edit 3 mins of video! lol

It's a learning curve. I've been told I still sound kind of monotone. I just don't have enough natural intonation in my voice and find it hard to fake. I don't think it ultimately matters that much anyway. If a person is fixated on that sort of thing then they probably aren't seriously interested in the subject matter anyway. I thought the vid's content was fine.

Editing audio is a tedious thing. One thing I do is that if I speak a sentence in a way that I didn't like, I just immediately repeat it in the way that I really wanted and edit out the one that didn't come out right. It becomes second nature after a while.

What software are you using to make the audio and do the actual video?

As for the issue itself: advocates of free will have never been able to adequately state what it is and from whence it issues. They're like people who vehemently demand that there really is water shimmering on the road far ahead but can't tell you how and why it's there.

Dan,

I've been told I still sound kind of monotone.

Who could've possibly told you that?

I thought that your intonation and delivery in general were just fine - I liked that it was unemotional (or, as has been said, "monotone"). I thought that it suited the subject matter perfectly: serious and considered. No need to change it in any way, IMO.

Your video seemed to end quite abruptly though - did it get cut off or was that really the end? It ended at 3:06 for me on your words "...is precisely what we do."

Animus,

Bully! It is really cool that you made that video; seems like a lot to figure out, the technical aspects and all. I thought your 'monotone' was okay, but the audio popping (mic to close?) was a bit distracting and the abrupt end sounded cut off.

I suspect he said more but decided not to include it, so that created a somewhat unnatural conclusion; I've seen that a lot on Youtube vids. The only real way around that sort of thing is to contrive an ending you fade into....

Would like to share a revelation...

Just discovered it's all about the RE. Which is how to time travel.

Uploading codes from the matrix.

Also discovered that television with the sound off, is mental peyote.

Galen Strawson wrote:We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are.

It seems to me "what we do" and "what we are" can be seen from an infinite number of angles. And since, so far as I can tell, it's impossible to point to one of them and say, "that's the real angle", the rest of the argument is meaningless to me.

Thanks for the comments and constructive criticisms.

I've made a new video using biblical text to argue against the common-sense notions of God and Free-Will.

This one is better.

The first one is clipped because I removed a thought experiment I had put on the end, I felt the Basic Argument stood firmly without the other 25 mins of script I had written. Sometimes I just get carried away!

I'm not sure what to do about the popping, its the way I say my Ps and popper-stopper hasn't helped.

Dan: I'm using Cyberlink PowerDirector for both audio/video. I'm thinking about using CoolEdit to try and fix up the audio, as PD isn't well equipped for it.

On another note, it took me 3 attempts to make the new video entitled "Smashing Idols Praise Reality" because some funky crashes kept occurring and for some reason the saved file kept disappearing, almost as if some divine intervention! lol

Animus wrote:I came across this basic argument attributed to British philosopher Galen Strawson

• • We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are.
  
  • In order to be ultimately responsible for what we do, we have to be ultimately responsible for what we are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
  
  • But we cannot, as the first point avers, be ultimately responsible for what we are, because, simply, we are what we are; we cannot be causa sui.
  
  • Therefore, we cannot be ultimately responsible for what we do.

The key word here being "ultimately." It can be said without argument that we are what we are. Even though we are speaking of a conscious entity (our own self), this is a form of A=A, since we can also state equally without argument that we are not what we are not.

The first part of the premise is less clear. We do what we do, in a given situation, because we are what we are. But how did we come to be in that situation? Is that also necessarily because we are what we are? I think in many cases this is so, that we do not merely find ourselves in every situation, but that who and what we are contributes to the situation and our being a part of it.

No one can be ultimately responsible for who and what he is. This would entail having had control over his very conception, if we take the term "ultimately" in its most literal sense.

Strawson's conclusion reflects most people's experience. No matter how much effort one exerts over one's environment, one has not created that environment, at least not completely. Therefore, one cannot help but react to one's environment, at least to some degree. As long as this degree is not zero, one cannot possibly be ultimately responsible for one's actions.

If the question of free will arises, we can take a special case in which the degree of reaction to one's environment is zero because one does not act at all. Reaction is a form of action; if there is no action, there is no reaction. Such a case of total passivity would be finite in time, at least for most people. It is said that some yogis are able to maintain a position for years, virtually indefinitely, neither eating nor sleeping and subsisting on respiration, which is involuntary. The classic explanation for the yogi's is that he is freeing himself as much as humanly possible from the fetters of the flesh, that he is seeking or has found freedom.

I think that, properly, the issue of free will should be confined to relative considerations. Take, for example, a slave who is beaten and starved into submission. Day after day, year after year, from his birth to the present moment, he is neither responsible for who, what, nor where he is. He is not responsible for what he does or what is done to him, except to the extent that compliance may lessen suffering. One day this slave manages to escape. He now must fend for himself the best he can. He still cannot be said to be responsible for what he does, as he still will not be responsible for what he is.

At the same time, it cannot be said that his situation has not changed. Does he now have free will? He has risked his life for his current "freedom." Here is where the notion of relative free will enters. He no longer gets regular beatings, but he also must procure his own sustenance. If asked, he will insist he prefers his new life over his previous life, and that in a very real sense he is now more free. He is now more responsible for what he does, if not ultimately so.

I think the philosophical insistence that the ex-slave is no more immune to the laws of cause and effect than he was previously misses something quite fundamental in such a scenario. Every other slave in his previous situation endured similar, if not identical, treatment. Yet they remain slaves and the ex-slave does not. None of them were ultimately responsible for what they were, and yet what one of them now is is markedly different. If ultimate responsibility is logically contradictory, the notion of responsibility itself is not. If there is no such thing as free will, it doesn't follow that will itself is merely an illusion. To rid oneself of delusion, one may decide to surrender one's will. You cannot surrender what you do not have. The delusion is not that will exists, but that it can be ultimately free.

Animus wrote:I've made a new video using biblical text to argue against the common-sense notions of God and Free-Will.

This one is better.

I actually found the first one a lot better. I didn't find the new one as effective mostly because it presented a whole lot of quotations with very minimal commentary on them, and so it wasn't entirely clear to me what overall point you were trying to make. You might think that it was clear, and so might other people, but at least for me on a single casual viewing, I just didn't get an overarching message. So basically, my suggestion is: up the commentary/analysis to quotation ratio.

Specifically, I'd suggest that you first make your point(s), and then present quotations to demonstrate/prove it/them, so that the viewer has some idea of what they're supposed to be looking for in the quotation - it's harder to look back on the quotation to see if it supports your later point than to view the quotation knowing already what you're trying to prove by it. I know that you did this to some extent, by explaining the distinction between spiritual and animal nature prior to presenting your later quotations, but I really think that you needed to relate this distinction more specifically to each quotation, because as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the subsequent quotations didn't even relate to this distinction - or at least it wasn't obviously clear to me that they did, and I would have appreciated you explaining how you thought that they did. And if some of those quotations were in fact intended to make a new, different point (as I suspect is the case), then I would have appreciated you introducing and explaining the point prior to presenting the quotations.

I have another minor criticism, and that is that sometimes when you were reading from visible quotations, the visible quotations faded out or transitioned before you'd finished reading them, which is disconcerting for someone trying to follow along (which is the natural thing to do); likewise, sometimes (or at least once) quotations didn't appear on the screen until after you'd started reading them, which again is disconcerting.

To counter that criticism with some positivity: I found a lot of the quotations that you presented to be very interesting and relevant, and I've no doubt that you could provide a cohesive commentary/analysis of them should you decide to.

Oh, and also: I like the music - it's one of my favourite AIC songs and it brings back good memories of my last years in high school. I'm not sure how appropriate the lyrics are though in the context of your interpretation of the Bible - I mean, "Jesus Christ, deny your maker"? I didn't think that you were trying to deny God, simply to redefine Him - at least that's what you wrote in the info box for the video. And how about "He who tries will be wasted"? I don't see the relevance of that to your video, in fact it seems to be antithetical to it: you seem to be suggesting that it's possible for us to aspire to a spiritual nature, so why would you then want to support a lyric that maintains that trying is futile?

I was afriad there might be confusion over the point of the video...

What I intended to present was the idea that the Biblical God, properly understood, is what we normally refer to as Reality. That the point of the text was to deceive with parables and similtudes, while simultaneously providing a key (Parable of the Sower, etc..) to understanding that it's not all about Fantasitical nonsense.

I intended to provide evidence that the text suggests people create images of God in the form of Man (bird, reptiles, etc..) and this is the lyric "deny your maker". Rather than accepting our role as humans, from dust we came and to dust we shall return, people deny reality as their "father" and construct false imagery (idols) in its place. I was attempting to show this was what people were doing with the text.

Some of the quotations refer to the orthodoxy doing this, while other scripture refers to the non-freedom of the will as is explained in John 6 and Romans 9. But that people will make themselves liken to Gods by this belief they are first causes. This is to say that the "Fear of the LORD" is this reality and that there is no escaping it, only submission to it, as my favourite demotivational poster says "Delusions: The only thing better than soaring on your dreams, is watching someone else soaring on their dreams knowing there is nowhere for them to land but in the ocean of reality."

People will say "God exist in reality" and this confines God to something within Reality. Reality is the one thing which cannot genuinely be denied, since everything relates to it, it is everywhere, it is eternal. But people try to deny that they are a product of it and posit some magical sky daddy in its place.

I think I'm going to make each point individually in follow up videos. What I think about Jesus Christ is "The Truth, The Way" and little more than that. If Truth is a mental representation of Reality, then Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God in that same way. God is the Reality, Jesus is the Truth.

See where I'm going with that?

guest_of_logic wrote:

Animus wrote:I've made a new video using biblical text to argue against the common-sense notions of God and Free-Will.

This one is better.

I actually found the first one a lot better. I didn't find the new one as effective mostly because it presented a whole lot of quotations with very minimal commentary on them, and so it wasn't entirely clear to me what overall point you were trying to make. You might think that it was clear, and so might other people, but at least for me on a single casual viewing, I just didn't get an overarching message. So basically, my suggestion is: up the commentary/analysis to quotation ratio.

Specifically, I'd suggest that you first make your point(s), and then present quotations to demonstrate/prove it/them, so that the viewer has some idea of what they're supposed to be looking for in the quotation - it's harder to look back on the quotation to see if it supports your later point than to view the quotation knowing already what you're trying to prove by it. I know that you did this to some extent, by explaining the distinction between spiritual and animal nature prior to presenting your later quotations, but I really think that you needed to relate this distinction more specifically to each quotation, because as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the subsequent quotations didn't even relate to this distinction - or at least it wasn't obviously clear to me that they did, and I would have appreciated you explaining how you thought that they did. And if some of those quotations were in fact intended to make a new, different point (as I suspect is the case), then I would have appreciated you introducing and explaining the point prior to presenting the quotations.

I have another minor criticism, and that is that sometimes when you were reading from visible quotations, the visible quotations faded out or transitioned before you'd finished reading them, which is disconcerting for someone trying to follow along (which is the natural thing to do); likewise, sometimes (or at least once) quotations didn't appear on the screen until after you'd started reading them, which again is disconcerting.

To counter that criticism with some positivity: I found a lot of the quotations that you presented to be very interesting and relevant, and I've no doubt that you could provide a cohesive commentary/analysis of them should you decide to.

Oh, and also: I like the music - it's one of my favourite AIC songs and it brings back good memories of my last years in high school. I'm not sure how appropriate the lyrics are though in the context of your interpretation of the Bible - I mean, "Jesus Christ, deny your maker"? I didn't think that you were trying to deny God, simply to redefine Him - at least that's what you wrote in the info box for the video. And how about "He who tries will be wasted"? I don't see the relevance of that to your video.

Anyway, for the most part, I think the scripture does an excellent job of portraying my thoughts, though its undoubtedly less clear to people who already have these images in their minds.

So... I wanted to provide quotations that built the case for Carnal/Spiritual dichotomy and then parabolic nature of scripture, then essentially get people to read the follow-up scripture in such a manner.

Animus wrote:Dan: I'm using Cyberlink PowerDirector for both audio/video.

Hmm, looks like decent software, but at $70US, it'll have to be Windows Movie Maker for me. Also, to prevent the "P" popping, try placing the mic in different positions so that you're not "breathing" directly into it when you say "P" words (assuming you haven't already tried that).

Animus wrote:See where I'm going with that?

Yes, I do, but without your explanation, the quotes on their own didn't lead me to that understanding. I mean, the anthropomorphisation is there in them, plain to see. If you want the viewer to see that anthropomorphism as symbolic, then you need to explain that symbolism first, but you didn't do so in the video. Here's the biggest example of why your interpretation doesn't naturally occur to the viewer: the end of the Romans 8:6-8 quotation that you provide is "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God". Now something that can be (dis)pleased is anthropomorphic, and I find it hard to see how this sentence can be interpreted in the way that you want us to interpret it - i.e. where God is an impersonal symbol for reality. I'm sure that you could find a way, all I'm saying is that it's not the interpretation that naturally occurs to the viewer, so if that's the one that you want us to take away from the quotations that you provide, then you need to build a case for it.

I want to add that I did get out of a lot of your quotes that parts of the Bible suggest that man's "free" will is actually determined or forced by God, so I don't think that you need to add a great deal of commentary there, but it would be useful to provide at least some IMO.

[reordered]

Animus wrote:That the point of the text was to deceive with parables and similtudes, while simultaneously providing a key (Parable of the Sower, etc..) to understanding that it's not all about Fantasitical nonsense.

Hmm. You sound a bit like Kevin, who interprets the Bible in the light of his own philosophy. I agree that the Bible is open to some degree of interpretation, but I strongly disagree that your radically unconventional interpretation can reasonably be described as "the point of the text". It's pretty clear to me that much of the Bible is intended to be taken literally, as - in the case of the Old Testament - the historical record of the acts of a veangeful, wrathful, violent, warlike, worship-demanding anthropomorphic deity in relation to His creation and His chosen people, and - in the case of the New Testament - as the historical record of both the literal saviour of mankind and the early community of believers which sprung up after the death and resurrection of that saviour. I have no objection to you (or Kevin) taking what you want from the Bible, and unconventionally reinterpreting it as symbolic, but I do object to you (or Kevin, although I don't think that he actually does make this claim: as I understand it he actually maintains that there is no objective way to interpret the Bible, and that any individual person's interpretation of it is simply more or less "wise" than any other person's interpretation) claiming that your unconventional interpretation is "the point of the text", as though you had found the "real" meaning, rather than what I believe that you are actually doing, which is trying to salvage something true and meaningful out of what I can only describe as a gigantic, contradictory, unbelievable and at times ridiculous mess.

Yea, for some reason I can't get Windows Movie Maker installed, the Microsoft Download site only provides Windows Vista downloads. I just bought Windows XP too, but even with SP 2 I can't get Movie Maker from the Add Windows Components dialog.

Dan Rowden wrote:

Animus wrote:Dan: I'm using Cyberlink PowerDirector for both audio/video.

Hmm, looks like decent software, but at $70US, it'll have to be Windows Movie Maker for me. Also, to prevent the "P" popping, try placing the mic in different positions so that you're not "breathing" directly into it when you say "P" words (assuming you haven't already tried that).

Animus wrote:Anyway, for the most part, I think the scripture does an excellent job of portraying my thoughts, though its undoubtedly less clear to people who already have these images in their minds.

Please tell me, what bible "version" are you referring to in all this?

Tomas wrote:

Animus wrote:Anyway, for the most part, I think the scripture does an excellent job of portraying my thoughts, though its undoubtedly less clear to people who already have these images in their minds.

Please tell me, what "version" of bible are you referring to in all this?

I used mostly KJV, but some of the scripture was really confusing so I used NIV for clarity.

In the video details I listed most of the passages and versions I used.

Animus wrote:

Tomas wrote:

Animus wrote:Anyway, for the most part, I think the scripture does an excellent job of portraying my thoughts, though its undoubtedly less clear to people who already have these images in their minds.

Please tell me, what "version" of bible are you referring to in all this?

I used mostly KJV, but some of the scripture was really confusing so I used NIV for clarity.

In the video details I listed most of the passages and versions I used.

Thanks :-)