Gay Nightclub mass shooting -- Orlando, Florida

[addictionary]

Morality is a set of rules that we come up with, and collectively enforce, to make our lives better. It is relevant to the goal of making human life better.

Choice is an illusion of subjective experience. An input is processed through a computing network via the laws of physics, and an output is produced. The brain itself has no power over the laws of physics. The processing structure is the result of genetics, life experience, and quantum randomness. So it is incidental. The laws of physics necessitate that each output be so. In the case of choice, once the information goes down the pipeline, a signal is sent between the unconscious and conscious part of the brain that a "choice" was made.

But no such thing could happen, because there is only the machine and the mechanics. And the latter shapes the former, and not the other way around.

Cannot we call the reason for the difference of the consequences of actions we make our choices? Within the laws of physics of course.

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

Morality is a set of rules that we come up with, and collectively enforce, to make our lives better. It is relevant to the goal of making human life better.

Choice is an illusion of subjective experience. An input is processed through a computing network via the laws of physics, and an output is produced. The brain itself has no power over the laws of physics. The processing structure is the result of genetics, life experience, and quantum randomness. So it is incidental. The laws of physics necessitate that each output be so. In the case of choice, once the information goes down the pipeline, a signal is sent between the unconscious and conscious part of the brain that a "choice" was made.

But no such thing could happen, because there is only the machine and the mechanics. And the latter shapes the former, and not the other way around.

I completely disagree with your fatalistic outlook. It's hard for me to understand why you would even bother engaging in the sorts of discussions that you do if you really believe that everything is essentially the inevitable result of a chain of events you don't have the ability to impact.

 

[Siro]

Cannot we call the reason for the difference of the consequences of actions we make our choices? Within the laws of physics of course.

Sure. Subjective experience still feels the same way regardless of whether we recognize the impossibility of free well or not. So for the sake of easing communication and fulfilling the human need to categorize and compartmentalize, we can pretend that we make choices.

But like you said, it really is about actions and their consequences. So if our actions lead to harming others, then we, or others, can label them immoral and try to prevent them. Remember, things still work the way they do now internally. So we should still work to debate morality and other topics as to improve the information used to shape the neural network that does the processing, and thus enables the production of better "choices".

 

[Siro]

I completely disagree with your fatalistic outlook. It's hard for me to understand why you would even bother engaging in the sorts of discussions that you do if you really believe that everything is essentially the inevitable result of a chain of events you don't have the ability to impact.

You insist on understanding what I'm saying in that simplistic way. Your disagreement baffles me. If you don't think we have a soul, than you cannot believe in free will and still be consistent. You either believe we're wholly natural, which makes us a materialist system like galaxies, mountains, and clouds, with no ability to control the response to stimuli. Or we are supernatural beings who can make choices. If you're the latter, then like I said to babe, there is no point in the disucssion.

And like I said to addictionary, whether or not we have real choice bares no importance on what we deem moral.

 

[NAOS]

Morality is a set of rules that we come up with, and collectively enforce, to make our lives better. It is relevant to the goal of making human life better.

Choice is an illusion of subjective experience. An input is processed through a computing network via the laws of physics, and an output is produced. The brain itself has no power over the laws of physics. The processing structure is the result of genetics, life experience, and quantum randomness. So it is incidental. The laws of physics necessitate that each output be so. In the case of choice, once the information goes down the pipeline, a signal is sent between the unconscious and conscious part of the brain that a "choice" was made.

But no such thing could happen, because there is only the machine and the mechanics. And the latter shapes the former, and not the other way around.

sounds like you're getting bent over by the notion of "law", dude.

All "nature" is supernatural.

 

[Siro]

sounds like you're getting bent over by the notion of "law", dude.

All "nature" is supernatural.

Not sure I understand.

 

[addictionary]

Sure. Subjective experience still feels the same way regardless of whether we recognize the impossibility of free well or not. So for the sake of easing communication and fulfilling the human need to categorize and compartmentalize, we can pretend that we make choices.

But like you said, it really is about actions and their consequences. So if our actions lead to harming others, then we, or others, can label them immoral and try to prevent them. Remember, things still work the way they do now internally. So we should still work to debate morality and other topics as to improve the information used to shape the neural network that does the processing, and thus enables the production of better "choices".

#Cho-£¥£-ses

Of course everything has a physical formula to be written down in deterministic mechanic rules like there is no subjectivity. Free will as a concept actually does not try to force the nature and physics to become something else. It is a concept for a person's social liberty when confronted by contrasting force -also formed by the people- that demands or forces her or him to do as they wish.

In this case, it is not clear enough. It kinda looks like a personal thing that is clothed with terrorism. Or maybe they built on each other in time. But these militants are not using their free will and becoming a mind slave of something they do not question and feed their feel for just with the insane amount of hate fed to them.

Sometimes something else happens. The brainwashed militia feels something is wrong and quits. If he succeeds at escaping the organization, we hear about him. This is free will. And by that will, maybe another massaccre did not happen.

 

[NAOS]

Not sure I understand.

I'm jumping in midstream here, and I really don't want to carefully read all the arguments in this particular thread, but it sounds like you're extending the "laws of physics" like it's still the 50s and 60s. Choice is one of the most difficult and paradoxical notions in the history of philosophy -- and the laws of physics only produce the worst kind of reductions unless they are applied with the most rigorous care AND complemented by other forces. IMO, of course.

 

[Siro]

I'm jumping in midstream here, and I really don't want to carefully read all the arguments in this particular thread, but it sounds like you're extending the "laws of physics" like it's still the 50s and 60s. Choice is one of the most difficult and paradoxical notions in the history of philosophy -- and the laws of physics only produce the worst kind of reductions unless they are applied with the most rigorous care AND complemented by other forces. IMO, of course.

Nonetheless, the universe does follow a set of rules, and we must assume that life follows the same rules as the rest of their universe. This is regardless of what these rules are, or how well we understand them. Free will, as it is understood by the mainstream, is logically impossible. That statement could have been made by the ancient hunter gatherers, the Greeks, the scientists of the 50s and 60s, or anyone today. I don't see how it can be any other way, unless you believe that humans are partly immaterial, and thus able to control the universe from without.

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

You insist on understanding what I'm saying in that simplistic way. Your disagreement baffles me. If you don't think we have a soul, than you cannot believe in free will and still be consistent. You either believe we're wholly natural, which makes us a materialist system like galaxies, mountains, and clouds, with no ability to control the response to stimuli. Or we are supernatural beings who can make choices. If you're the latter, then like I said to babe, there is no point in the disucssion.

And like I said to addictionary, whether or not we have real choice bares no importance on what we deem moral.

Even if the soul does not exist there are humongous differences between inanimate objects and living things. IMO, not only do humans make choices, but so do all life forms.

 

[Siro]

Even if the soul does not exist there are humongous differences between inanimate objects and living things. IMO, not only do humans make choices, but so do all life forms.

And how are those choices made? If you were an individual living in Syria, then you could have been a member of ISIS. That would have been a possible choice given the way your experience shaped your brain, just like you now possess Western ideals and make choices/hold opinions typical of those in your culture.

I know that the notion of free will is comforting for many, much like religion. But think about it, given your mental state at any certain moment, how can you choose anything except what physics inevitably gets from information going thru that state? How, given that we live in a mechanistic universe, can we choose between two equally possible outcomes?

 

[Scat]

Morality is a set of rules that we come up with, and collectively enforce, to make our lives better. It is relevant to the goal of making human life better.

Choice is an illusion of subjective experience. An input is processed through a computing network via the laws of physics, and an output is produced. The brain itself has no power over the laws of physics. The processing structure is the result of genetics, life experience, and quantum randomness. So it is incidental. The laws of physics necessitate that each output be so. In the case of choice, once the information goes down the pipeline, a signal is sent between the unconscious and conscious part of the brain that a "choice" was made.

But no such thing could happen, because there is only the machine and the mechanics. And the latter shapes the former, and not the other way around.

.