This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
When I make a decision my brain 0 then my soul 0 and then 0 and the decision is made. My soul then 0 and the brain does 0 and the decision is implemented.
WTF is a hylephobe?
no
you are still focused on “the world” perhaps creating a world that is not the best serves a higher good.
In that case the greater good would prevent God from creating the best world.
In that case God could agree that this is not the best possible world but still be doing good when he creates it.
peace
Nicely summarized. That’s going to leave a mark.
Have you seen The Bear?
Keiths seemed to think he had a method of describing them in which they come off worse, though. That left me undecided myself.
By “world” I mean EVERY FREAKING THING! If this plus that is better than this alone, then God has to make this plus that or is defective in either strength, goodness or intelligence. “Universe” or “world” has to be all-inclusive, obviously.
Shorter version is the ends justify the means. is it logically impossible for God to do both?
newton,
That’s a good question, but I think first we ought to settle on what “world” means or we’re not going to make much sense. I mean EVERYTHING, FMM seems to mean something else, so that God could make a so-so “world” because other stuff he was doing made up for that. Let’s agree that by “world” we’re talking about ALL the stuff–visible to humans or not.
I’m not pontificating, just giving my opinion. If you think that the concept of a tetrahedron is multiple, can you tell us in what way it is a multiplicity?
I don’t have any experience of bio-dynamic agriculture so my mind is open with regard to bladders or cow horns or anything related.
I honestly have no idea whether my concept of tetrahedron is the same as yours. And with respect to “bio-dynamic agriculture” I’ll just say if one of my intellectual heroes said that the cosmos is closely analogous to a stag’s bladder so chamomile ought to be stuffed into it when farming, I’d maybe think about looking elsewhere for inspiration.
Only to inform in libertarian free will, decisions are only caused by uncaused will.
Unless he was high on shrooms at the time or something. Maybe I could overlook it then.
Works for me. But if I can imagine a ” world ” that part of it is not so so, then this would not be the best possible world.
fifth,
Riiiight. You just happened to quote my question immediately before your answer, but your answer wasn’t in response to my question, it was a response to some other unspecified question from OMagain:
Just how stupid do you think the readers are?
ETA: In a comment in which you respond to all three of my questions, no less!
That is just incomprehensible to me.
I can imagine all kinds of things that are not part of this universe and I simply have no way (sans revelation) to know if they actually exist. I can’t assume that they don’t exist as part of some other universe that God created. I can only say that they don’t exist here.
When most folks say “world” or universe they mean the reality that we have direct access to. There is simply no reason that this world would have to be the best one.
Does this all inclusive universe/world include God?
One we start talking about God’s total reality we just have no frame of reference. I would not even know where to begin in trying to evaluate whether it is the best or not.
I’m at the mercy of what God has reveled and he has revealed that he is all good and all powerful.
More that that I can not say.
peace
It depends on the ends and the means
peace
I don’t think they are stupid as a whole but I’m beginning to wonder about some of them 😉
peace
fifth,
And at the mercy of what you mistakenly think God has revealed, with no way to tell the difference.
You are assuming that a mystery can’t be a fact.
You are also assuming that something that is not described algorithmicly is not explained.
I can’t think of a more arrogant attitude to take.
peace
Just because you hold your ears does not mean that there is no sound.
Just claiming something does not make it true
Just because you don’t like an answer does not mean that no answer has been given
peace
fifth,
Which of them do you think are stupid enough to believe that you weren’t trying to answer my questions in this comment?
ETA:
It’s a term Dennett coins for people who are made terribly anxious at the thought that their selves, souls, personalities, character, consciousness, subjectivity, or mind could have anything to do with something so yucky, disgusting, dirty, dead, passive, and inert as matter.
It’s born from (here following Freud and Nietzsche more than Dennett) a fear of contamination and a neurotic compulsion for purity. This comes through in phoodoo’s insistence on “chemicals” as almost a term of abuse.
ends- higher good, means- children suffering excurciating deaths
Sort of like cancer medicine and side effects.
Just because the side effects are bad. Always painful and sometimes fatal does not mean that we should nix the medicine.
peace
ok, well. Not me then. 🙂
I thought it might have some relation to Aristotelianism. It’s hard to believe Dennet is actually advocating hylophilia.
Of course it is not at all relevant to my position or that of the other theists here AFAIKT.
It does work to poison the well though
peace
newton:
fifth:
Right. We should celebrate the medicine. Children suffering excruciating deaths — yay! Thank you for the medicine, God.
who said we should celebrate the medicine.
I for one hate the medicine. I just hate the disease more
peace
fifth,
For what disease is “children dying excruciating deaths” the medicine?
Mung,
For the sake of argument I will admit the moon is made of cheese. You are somewhat missing the point.
So are you implying that in phoodoo world, it is a requirement that decisions involve reasons? Quite apart from if I ‘admit’ that or not, that does not seem to advance us very far. Could you clarify the process a little further with regard to the (presumably) immaterial realm where these decisions involving reasons are made?
Mung,
Dennett believes in mind reading apparently.
No relation to Aristotle. Dennett is sometimes a better writer than he should be — meaning that sometimes he can’t resist being a clever wordsmith even when it distracts from his more important points.
Of course Dennett is a naturalist — but as I read Dennett (and I think this is widely accepted) he is a naturalist because he’s a verificationist. He’s not willing to allow anything into his ontology that can’t be verified. (That does lead him to certain excesses that I myself do not share.)
So when he calls himself a materialist, or opposes anti-materialism, he is helping himself to a term of abuse long heaped on Epicurean metaphysics even though his epistemology is quite un-Epicurean.
Hence he calls anti-materialists “hylephobes” — people who are afraid of matter.
Kantian Naturalist,
Why do you think Dennett is so afraid of God?
I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Fifth. By ‘world’ I mean everything–whether you or I know about it, can comprehend it, have ever thought about it or not. EVERY FREAKING THING. That all-inclusive set must be the best of all possible such sets or your God is defective in some way–in strength, intelligence or goodness. This claim has nothing to do with what you or I can or cannot comprehend. It has to do with the meanings of the words ‘ALL,’ goodness,’ ‘power,’ and ‘intelligence.’ I’m really having trouble with your resistance to the claim that a perfect deity must create the best possible WORLD (not planet, galaxy, visible universe, things comprehensible by people, etc.–WORLD.
Why are you afraid of the monster that lives under your bed?
When did you stop beating your wife?
So it is logically impossible for an omnipotent God to achieve an unknown higher good without children dying excurciating deaths?
A creation in selfish insane self destructive total rebellion against it’s creator is the disease.
“children dying excruciating deaths” is not the medicine it’s a side effect of the medicine.
peace
I haven’t yet.
Any theories about why he is afraid?
No it’s impossible to say one way or the other when you don’t know what the greater good is.
If the “greater good” is evolutionary fitness then it’s not possible to accomplish with out children dying excurciating deaths AFAICT.
peace
Kantian Naturalist,
The reason I am asking is because you almost give the impression at first that its a ridiculous question to ask why he is afraid of God. But then you actually don’t think its ridiculous to assume this about him right? You think it is a reasonable assumption, yes?
That’s correct isn’t it?
does that include God?
Why is that?
I’ve been pretty open that I think talk of the “best possible world” is simply incoherent.
what can best even mean in this context?
Also it is incorrect in the extreme to say that God must create anything.
The whole topic makes no sense to me.
It really sounds to me like a juvenile taunt that you might hear in the playground. Rather than a mature philosophical subject for adults. Something like “Can god create a rock so big that he can’t lift it?”
I’d be happy to look at it a little deeper if you could articulate it in a way that I can understand.
peace
keiths:
fifth:
A “selfish insane self destructive total rebellion” that God preordained, according to you and your fellow Calvinists.
What is the medicine? Why does it cause children to die excruciating deaths?
Given at some point science and society will advance to the point where that no longer happens, one wonders how that lesson will then be imparted. Perhaps once a year we’ll spontaneously agree to sacrifice 1 in 100 children for reasons.
We see no differences in incidences of such issues (illnesses) between theists and nontheists. Seems even those who are doing the opposite of rebelling get punished along with the rebels. Mysterious ways indeed.
Everyone is in rebellion. Sans the Grace of God.
For the elect these things aren’t punishment but opportunities to partner with God and be a part of the cure.
peace
You are also a compatibilist
You are on record affirming that just because something is determined does not mean it was not freely chosen.
Exile from the only source of life and peace.
When you are exiled from the source of life, death happens.
peace
Everyone
I apologize for the direction this thread has taken.
It’s yet another interesting discussion derailed by the God obsessions that folks here have
peace
That the millennium has dawned perhaps?
quote:
No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
(Isa 65:20)
and
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
(1Co 15:25-26)
end quote:
peace
Withing Christianity such views have often been deemed heretical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism