proximoception | (no subject)

Addressing determinism, the idea that all is caused: 1. Do you know exactly how? If yes, you are omniscient, the world is complete and I wish you well. 2. Do you not know exactly how all is caused? Then you do not know that it is. 3. Do you rather assume it is, based on observed probability and the shapes of events? Fair enough, though I'd like to know more about your methodology; but what possible meaning does this conclusion have for you?

Round two: It means there is no freedom. In the sense of ability to escape cause? Yes, that is part of your premise. So? So all I do is predetermined. Predetermined sounds suspiciously like a term of intention. Let's replace it with "caused" again, or all-caused. What's wrong with being all-caused? I might as well not exist at all, or exist in some completely different way. Might as well from what perspective? Some ways of being you'd presumably enjoy more. You don't understand. There is no me. Because you're part of a larger causal chain? Yes. But you don't know the composition of that chain. It doesn't matter, it is real. But not to you, in its entirety, and its entirety is all we're worried about here. But I feel I don't exist! No you don't, you wouldn't know how to feel that. But I feel unease that I might now. You exist to you, if only as error, and presumably as ineradicable error. Your personal world, since contributed to by your lack of knowledge, will never be the world of the truth. And therefore you have escaped cause. You are free. But wherever I make this assumption I will trip over the truth and feel myself disappear again. The light of truth disintegrates you wherever you're exposed to it? Well, is that unpleasant? Maybe you can get used to it. It will never get all of you, as we established. And presumably death is not ultimate revelation, in a knowledge sense. But all the things I say about me I need to stop saying. It's all lies. How so? You live in your world, you're allowed to map things out, label things. Whatever works, right? But the labels are false and must be discarded shortly. Discard them shortly then, if so. Look, find the errors the light of truth never destroys, or the ones that grow back fastest when disintegrated. Use these as foundations. Explore outwards from there. Be prepared to discard labels as you approach the danger areas. Approach these only where you need truth to function, actually--though that's likely a lot of places. Take notes, make drawings. You'll be alright. But what about you? Well, I have extension so I don't exist, so don't worry about me. Use the phenomenon or idea of me in any way that helps, by the way.

How can you be so calm about not existing?

But I do exist. But just as error. No, not as error. Things move and I am one of them. Moved by other things. Yes and et cetera. You are caused. But cause is not caused. Yes, every cause is caused by one or more causes. But cause itself is not. Movement must be inherent to being, and if not at one point then throughout. As a citizen of the throughout I proudly proclaim my uncausedness. Even if that were so, so what, so you're random. Not random. Random would be entire uncause, and hence nothing. I am open to cause and uncause both, apparently. I am the largely settled explosion of overlapping substances and awarenesses that are the record and sustenance of such a meeting. Well that sounds weird. It's just what happens. All adjectives apply.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Not sure I can say what I've said already in shorter space, but it's worth trying. Restatement in any form tends to bridge gaps.

The assumption that you can have entire randomness or entire cause, and that's the whole menu, is what I'm addressing.

Randomness acting in the same way across all aspects of a single object would be itself a kind of uniformity. This is important, as I think it's how we imagine randomness: it becomes a shimmering gray or orange plane, or some similar changing but controlled image. "Nothing matters since it's all random," you hear people say when they've rejected whatever causal or structural view of things they've been relying on. They base this absurd certainty, I think, on this static image their mind gives when they think of ultimate dynamism.

Distinction and movement (double distinction) are the case, rather than uniformity, therefore if there is a random basis to existence it is not expressed evenly throughout. As there is variation in effect, there are differentiable states (identity to me is based in this differentiation, hence is a relative quality; we are a part of everything and everything's a part of us, or however you phrased it above, but to such varying degrees that this reminder settles nothing, philosophically). These states inevitably act on one another, while simultaneously being acted on "inside" by the basic ununiform craziness. Starting to see what I'm getting at? There is a direction in you, clashing or merging with those pushing on your outside, therefore you are "self-directed" as well as acted on causally.

This isn't as minimalistic as it sounds. Randomness-based formations acting on (or resisting) one another causally can take any shape and color--never forever, but for many almost-evers. These are real things. We are real things, sustained distinctions-in-motion.

An objection one can make to this view is its reliance on the sense of difference, which may be inaccurate: all really may be caused, or randomness itself may be somehow uniform--and our consciousness makes something discontinuous out of a fundamental order. This is where my second (though presented first) defense of free will comes in. The mind escapes full rule because it doesn't grasp the rules: so long as I am slightly mistaken, my world is slightly random. A weaker argument, I suppose, as it does not do away with determinism, just the protestation of determinism, the various bizarre significances determinists give to the possibility of complete causality.

Yes, I think the last defense you mentioned is rather weak from the point of view of an objective argument for free will. But it's a very good explanation of why we have to act as if we have free will (have to in a literal sense, not an ethical sense). It also raises issues about the nature of causality, such as "all causes we know of depend upon causes we know nothing of." At first, this argument seems to lead to a conclusion of total randomness, but as you rightly point out, things are not this one-sided. We do create a meaningful world of causality from the unknowns we find in the world, but this world is inherently practical and empirical, rather than ideal. It's based on descriptions. This brings me to your other point.

The issue that I have with this is that you seem to be sticking to the idea that there is a definitive, intrinsic "you" which exists, and which is separate from the rest of the universe -- "There is a direction in you, clashing or merging with those pushing on your outside." This "you" is a pragmatic, descriptive distinction, and the idea itself comes from "the language and tradition," to quote Borges. I did not invent the idea of "I."

Speaking of Borges, he does two very interesting things with the ideas of determinism and identity. On the one hand, he posits the idea that all men could become any man, that consciousness is fungible, that there is no intrinsic self. When I become engrossed in Shakespeare, I become Shakespeare. That is to say, there is no single, binding "me" that is at the core of my shifting self. On the other hand, he also posits the idea that each man has a destiny, that each man cannot escape being himself, for his particular shifts of consciousness are his own. In "The Immortal," he points out that for a man to become all men, he would need to be immortal. In a different story (I can't remember the title), he tells of a man who creates a huge picture composed of innumerable objects, takes his whole life to make it, and at his death he realizes that it is a picture of his own face. Basically, because I'm not anything particular, I can never escape being myself, because anything I do is me. Hope that makes sense.

I've been toying with a new description myself lately for the purpose of explaining the formation of identity. It's been influenced by my stint in law school, and it basically makes room for self-creation by way of randomness. It's more about the psychological perception of self rather than what "self" is, but then again I suppose I don't really think that self "is" anything in particular. It's too long, so I'll post it as a reply.

The issue that I have with this is that you seem to be sticking to the idea that there is a definitive, intrinsic "you" which exists, and which is separate from the rest of the universe -- "There is a direction in you, clashing or merging with those pushing on your outside." This "you" is a pragmatic, descriptive distinction, and the idea itself comes from "the language and tradition," to quote Borges. I did not invent the idea of "I."

Eh. Definitive as in bounded all 'round? No. Intrinsic as in welling exclusively from inside? No. Separate? No, semi-detached, something like a limb gone wild. Merely pragmatic and descriptive? Dude, everything is. Any rationalism--hell, logic itself--must be based in representations. Nothing clicks with anything till you've summoned forth a something.

The crucial thing I'm arguing isn't our pragmatic need to speak of a self, but our need to speak of a self inside such pragmatisms as philosophy. Our distinctness isn't made up by us, though I suppose we exaggerate it where that reduces tension. Our distinctness--relative degree and shape of discreteness--affects our every project.

We're not a closed figure of uniform consistency. But neither is the universe, see? The distinctions inside matter are part of what matter is, and where these double and triple and googloople up into what we speak of as entirely discrete units, though these are of course not pure discrete units they are not illusions, not folds in a quilt that the maid will straighten out. The folds are as real as the quilt, and folded parts are deeply different from unfolded ones. Maybe we should come up with a new word for 'self' if it's been overly polluted by religious supernaturalisms seeking to remove it from the world. But we need a word.

As for "the language and tradition": no one would deny these affect how we close the 'half-figure' that is us (but again, this half-figure is categorically different not just from closed figures, but from non-figures). But to the extent the 'how' is traceable it is erasable: awareness of the exact nature of an influence permits that influence to be 'flowed against' and neutralized, or added to the general bag of winds where beneficial. People trying to make something of the language/tradition argument have to emphasize our lack of knowledge of how thoroughly we may have been influenced. Maybe all through, is the implication. But as this is removed from reasons, examples and details--because once we have these we have a handle on said influence--there is no possible way to argue it is "all through". So what do you do with that? Try to imagine what it's like if it were true? By definition you can't. And anyway this feeds back into my central argument: any distortion acting on the invading influence in non-uniform ways as it passes through our dominoes becomes, in effect, a grass-roots force resisting the influence, which thus falls on different "parts" of us with different weight and can be in some way measured, hence acted against. And voila, we have a free core again. Not a core like a pure sphere, but a core like any apple.

Remember, too: the apple core is what creates the idea of the sphere core, not the other way 'round.

Borges rules. And was perfectly aware that even immortality can only expand human identity to the vast but finite set of all possible human identities. And the picture guy's identity is circumscribed to the set of all-possible-variations-of-everything-he-has-ever-seen. Still limited, still identities.

God help you if you've read all this.