Donnadogsoth

If God has no preferences and everything is God, then how can anything be said to be good or evil? If nothing is good or evil in any meaningful sense, why should anyone care whether or not rape, murder, and genocide occur?

I didn't say, “awareness is aware of itself”; the mind is not identical to awareness. I said, why can't a mind, which is something, be aware of itself? Obviously minds can be aware of themselves or else how could we be said to be “self-conscious,” “self-aware,” or have “self-knowledge”? The highest knowledge we can gain comes to us only secondarily from sense-perception and logic, primarily from the use of hypothesis and proof-of principle experiment. The difference is that the hypothesis is a creative act and the results of a successful experiment are not logically deducible from the original knowledge base. Reducing a cherry's redness or greenness to a measurable wavelength begs the question of what a wavelength means. A wavelength is a sense-impression displayed on a measuring machine. What if most people saw the cherry of said wavelength of colour was green? Would the popular vote win the day? The wavelength by itself means nothing. Saying “existence exists” can be collapsed solipsistically into “I exist”, for the reason already given that mind (mind which has awareness, but is not itself equivalent to awareness) can be aware of itself, and does not require a substrate in order to exist. One's “choice” to either walk or run is still guided by the material of the brain which operates according to physical laws governing the behaviour of fundamental particles. If there is no soul, no mind independent of matter, then all is literally reductionist matter, and all behaviour will be purely and solely a result of the working-out of that matter according to said physical laws.

Why can't a mind be aware of itself? The same goes for God. We only know “existents” in the form of sense impressions, which are present only in the mind. Colour, estimation of length, estimation of hardness, are all categories the mind uses to present to itself the appearance of an object. Since these qualities are what the observer imagines (a different observer might see the cherry is green, etc.), the cherry, in of itself, has no redness, stemmedness, or pit, except as we imagine the cherry itself has a mind, a perspective, a soul of some kind that provides the substance that is reflected into the mind of the observer(s). No zombies are allowed in the Universe! For, consider you are an individual, and I am an individual, and the cat over there is an individual, but is the cherry an individual? An individual cannot be divided. My mind, myself, cannot be split in two. Yet we can split the cherry in two, perhaps with a laser, and none are the wiser. Hence my talk of zombies. Are we really surrounded by zombie matter? To say “existence exists” might mean no more than “I exist” (solipsism). There needs to be a self or substance behind a thing's phenomenal existence before we can say that it “exists” outside of our idiosyncratic perception of its apparent existence. I agree that free will is compatible with idealist monism, but not materialist monism, because if the Universe is matter and nothing but, it must obey the laws of matter. Minds that happen for no reason (violating the psr) to be associated with material brains must therefore obey material laws. In idealist monism there is no matter as such and so the minds are free to choose by virtue of their own non-material natures. Materialist monism renders mind material, remember, and we do not find free choice in the material world that all brains reduce to—atoms, quarks, leptons, and the like. You seem to envisage some sort of “wiggle room” that makes human brains not subject to the causality that applies to the very ingredients that they are made of (and made of nothing but).

I reject your rejection of souls on the following grounds: Free will is compatible with monism, but, only if the mental dimension is said to constitute and create the material dimension. Take any material object, you will find it is composed in your experience of a bundle of predicates. The cherry is red, contains a pit, sports a stem, etc.. Remove your experience and under the principle of sufficient reason (psr) nothing is left—there is no reason for anything to be left--unless the cherry itself has a perspective. Mind is therefore primary to all existence. "Material" is merely the experiences the mind has of its own nature, or, if we admit the existence of other minds, its own nature as that nature harmoniously reflects the interaction between these minds. This view is compatible with free will, while the existence of a soul (mind independent of any physical substrate) is shown. Metaphysical naturalism is replaced by metaphysical idealism. I anticipate your objection: What force harmonises the different minds making their reflections accurate? That must be answered, "God".

You keep referring to me. Why? If I don't exist, why are you talking? Are you a solipsist?

Why are you using the word "you" in reference to me if I am not a whom?

I don't quite understand your objection. Are you a metaphysical naturalist? If so, how does determinism not hold?

Simple and understandable to whom?

Who is the "I" you refer to?

Who are the "we" who "experience"?

What does free will mean in naturalistic terms? If everything is material, including the brain, and the mind is a function of the brain, then whence cometh choice? What appears to be choice would just be the action of matter, as the electrochemistry, atomic interaction, quantum effects, etc., of the brain. Where does freedom come into it?

I don't know, why is God so retarded?

God's a bit of a cunt, then, isn't he?

Relate any possible reason for the mind's association with the body, to what we were discussing in the “Why am I me and not you?” thread. All minds being equal, as mere nodes of experience, there is insufficient reason for any one mind to associate with any one body. Either all minds are the same mind (pantheism) or there are no minds (complete eliminativist materialism). To break free of these two alternatives we must consider that every mind is unique, akin to the content of a single, unreproduced original LP recording. My unique mind gives God, who created it, sufficient reason to associate my mind with my body and not another body. Without this consideration, again, pantheism or complete eliminativist materialism, both of which destroy the soul as a distinct entity. On free will: If we believe the mind to be distinct from other minds, we must believe that those minds (souls) are unique; and if we believe souls are unique and possess free will, they must be separate from the material of the brain (metaphysical naturalism) because under that metaphysic there is no “alternate world” for free will to come from. Free will means choice unbound from physics. If all there is is physics, there is no room for free will. Thus if we believe we have free will we must also have souls.

I've started a new thread here.

First, everything I say presumes the action of the principle of sufficient reason (psr), which states that everything is the way it is for a reason. Second, we must separate mind from brain. It is clear from the action of the unconscious, the brain, in creating the vivid, detailed, highly structured domain of dreams, that the brain is perfectly capable of highly functioning outside of the conscious mind. We also see this in the careful actions of somnambulists, and the autonomic processes of the body. In other words the brain can function reflexively in all capacities without any need for a conscious mind. In terms of metaphysical naturalism, there is insufficient reason for the conscious mind to exist. Third, the fact that, as everyone knows from empirical experience, the mind does exist, demonstrates that the mind is distinct from the brain. This mind I call “soul”.

I'm not sure I read you. Are you asking why there are souls at all?

Principle of identity of indiscernibles: two things which are indistinguishable from each other are the same thing. Two souls that are indistinguishable from each other, physical bodies aside, would be the same soul. Either souls are characteristically distinct, or else we face pantheism.

God's will. There must be some irreducible characteristic of you that defines you-ness as apart from the physical entity you are mapped to. On this basis God assigns you to said entity under the principle of sufficient reason.

Yes, because only humans are made in the image of God. That means we are masters of the noösphere or field of cognitive transformation of the Universe. Animals can be used by us, but they cannot participate cognitively in said sphere by definition. Ergo, human life is worth more than animal. Exceptions can be found, granted, as some humans merit death and some animals' worth outweigh that of those humans, but in general terms humans are worth more than animals. I'm not sure what "more sentient" would mean when applied to machines. Better able to discover universal principles, I guess? Anything that can discover such principles is a person by definition, so at that point we need a word that embraces both biological humans and artificial sentient life, or sapient life, as I've heard it called.

Then when they forfeit their agency when they commit evil acts, society can give them a choice: either be made good, stay in jail until they die, or be executed.

So is locking evil people up.

“Tenderness is not weakness, it is fortitude.” --Pope Francis “If the greatest obstacle in your life is seeing a Confederate battle flag on the background of someone's computer, you need more problems.” --Ben Shapiro

Isn't Stefan trying to make evil people into good people?

America is already bankrupt. Who better to lead the country than someone who knows the ins and outs of bankruptcy?