In my opinion, you only philosophically poison debates. I was using methodological individualism. But because you possess a semantic hang-up on the word “society”, do not practice methodological individualism, and thereby have not been able to transform the concept into methodological individualism as I have been able to with intellectual skill, then it is not my fault, but your own theoretical failure.
Yet I’m done. You have attacked my life enough. You have attacked my values enough. I incline to be around some people that actually maintain peace and civility instead of creating, in belief of what you do, unneccessary, spurious divisions in most of your countless post, after post, after post towards others. In my opinion, this post of yours is just another example of your lack of being able to penetrate intellectually into the meaningful substance. It’s called practice what you preach. You preach methodological individualism after the fact, but failed to practice methodological individualism initially while interpreting my post. If you possessed the knowledge and usage of methodological individualism in the first place while interpreting my post, then you wouldn’t have failed to see that I was using methdological individualism in that post of mine. This only goes to prove the failure of your theory in practice, not a failure of mine. You ended up only refuting yourself.
It is my belief you do this because you desire conflict instead of peace. Since in all my posts I have maintained peace, and you only philosophically attack this peace that I possess and maintain, then I can not be near a person that I believe desires violence which is you.
To others that do not care to maintain peace and civility, then I really don’t give a rat’s ass what you think either and that’s my opinion. So be it.
I have proven natural law and natural rights and they remain maintained. I now await for others to do the same.
To everybody else that does care about peace, some day I think some people will get what’s coming to them. Hold out, maintain your spirit in joy, and God Bless
You’re blowing this way out of proportion & are personalizing this way too much.
At no point did i see him abusing the forum to “attack” your life or values, & instead just kept on arguing his disagreements with you (and you obliged him with responses).
Perhaps I should re-read the arguments across the various threads? Maybe I missed something.
You seem quite confused. Armstrong wanted to know why/how people act purposefully, and how human action differs from the spatial trajectory of comets, for example, or the occurrence of earthquakes. I answered that question (others did as well). Next, I told him that he needs to actually support his materialistic position; put forth some kind of argument.
No, you people straw man’d my argument to mean something I SPECIFICALLY STATED TWICE I did not mean. By the way, I wasn’t directly supporting the materialistic position (even though I do support that). I was asking for arguments which support the position that our decisions aren’t based on physical interactions of chemicals inside our brain, especially given that we know that when our brain’s have been physically hampered or harmed in some way, our decision making abilities are likewise hampered or harmed.
Please, offer one single argument for that position, because we have already offered many, such as the drugs argument I made earlier. All you stated is that drugs may effect our decisions but that doesn’t necessarily mean our decisions are made by chemicals. Fine, but it does point in that direction, offer one which points in the other.
First, all arguments dealing with this subject are laughable at best, both because they lack the necessary empirical evidence, and because they cannot be known a priori. The causal directions of stimuli are spurious, the system in question is extremely complicated and intricate, and both arguments are counter-intuitive. Which ever argument seems more intuitive is a matter of preference.
Behaviorism failed.
But more than that, you’re the one who put forth a proposition; either validate it, or move on. You’re not going to force a debate here.
Lines of evidence which support that our brains run on chemicals, and that humans aren’t some special case.
Drugs (chemicals) affect our decision making abilities
Brains exist. Not just in us, but in much smaller animals who don’t have the same complexity as we do, but do have the same or very similar structures.
Animals brains function similar to us. We have countless examples of animals learning very similarly to us. Pavlov’s dog ring a bell. We even have chimps who have learned language, acted with purpose, and have even done things like apologize for past harms.
Human’s aren’t instantly granted the power of acting with purpose. A zygote doesn’t have any more purpose or consciousness than an amoeba. They grow, their brains grow, and as we watch those brains grow and make more and more connections between neurons eventually surpassing the dog who played with them as a infant, and the chimps. We see that people who don’t make those connections don’t gain those abilities. So it’s not a case of correlation != causation.
Artificial Intelligence. We see that the principles which our brains are founded on can be simulated on small scale’s within computers. Neurological networks actually work at solving problems running on computers. Now they are admittedly smaller problems then the one’s our brains can handle, but they are also orders of magnitude smaller scales.
Evolution explains why we have the desires most of us have. Which is to live and reproduce, and all those things which further our lives. The single most beneficial tool at achieving that is our brain. So of course our brain is ingrained with an urge to live and reproduce, and to do those things which help us do that. But evolution hasn’t evolved us to perfection, and some of the tools that were beneficial earlier or are still beneficial in some ways but not others can lead to our own harm.
Lines of evidence to suggest something other than physical interactions and chemical reactions.
There is a wealth of evidence for materialism. Check out either ‘The Ego Tunnel’ or ‘Being No One’ by Metzinger. The great thing about his books is that he is knowledgeable of the newest breakthroughs in neuroscience, and provides countless, specific examples to support his position.
Dualism is not even a tenable position. The problems with dualism make the rough edges and holes in our understanding of conscious seem like nothing.
If you chose to push your argument all the way to the necessary conclusions (that is, if you were logically consistent), you would get to behaviorism (though the movement isn’t entirely homogeneous). Now go read the refutations of behaviorism.
Either way, you have yet to put forth a definitive or coherent argument supporting your position. I want proof, and an actual argument.
yes, we have minds because we have brains. we are ‘selves’ because we have brains. our actions occur within the universe and have not some mysterious divide from physics, chemistry, et all
yet for all that. living people have purposes, and are agents. tsunami’s and earthquakes do not have purposes and are not agents. do you disagree?
All you stated is that drugs may effect our decisions but that doesn’t necessarily mean our decisions are made by chemicals.
what does it mean for a decision to be caused by chemicals? do chemicals muse over issues, do they ponder and consider, and believe things, and go on to decide matters?
What else would you suggest does all that? Complex, interrelated physical/chemical processes in your brain produce emergent phenomena, one of which is your acting, pondering, reasoning, and deciding “self”.
I think that nirgraham’s point is that the language we use in describing intentionality is still useful, even if ‘free will’ or mind/body dualism is false, in the same way that the symbol ‘hand’ is still useful even if ‘hand/palm-fingers dualism’ is false.
I can agree that the language is useful, but I think using that language to justify a categorical difference between people and nature presumes free will or mind/body dualism e.g. It’s wrong because you have purpose, but the earthquake didn’t so it wasn’t wrong. Saying those chemicals in his brain shouldn’t have been in that pattern to shoot someone, is exactly like saying that earthquake shouldn’t have happened. Or let’s bring it up one higher. It’s exactly like saying the chemicals in the wolf’s brain shouldn’t have been in that pattern to rip that guy’s throat out.
Say what ever you will about not having proof of behaviorism, there is not even evidence to suggest that the difference between those two things is anything more than a difference of scale and complexity.
Intentionality (at its most meaningful in jurisprudence) has to deal with proximate behavior and accountability norms of actors by definition. The question of free will or determinism is totally irrelevant; one may be accountable for an action one was not even near or aware of (your equipment dropping a box on someone walking by). The whole inane ‘free will debate’ and the obsession some libertarians have over it only arise because of the ridiculous and impossible attempt to associate moral responsibility with jurisprudence.
Yes, thanks. Upon reading nir’s post again, it seems that this may indeed be his point. The emergent nature of these phenomena does not preclude language and reason (another two emergent phenomena, btw) from acknowledging their existence. A better analogy (than the hand) would be a wave: it’s nothing but a complex physical pattern (oscillating matter/energy) which language and reason have found useful to acknowledge as a specific separate entity/phenomenon. A wave emerges from oscillating matter/energy, just like our ‘self’ emerges from the complex chemical/physical patterns in our brains. The wave disappears when the matter/energy stops oscillating, just like our ‘self’ disappears when the chemical/physical patterns go away (or veer outside the realm of ‘self’ patterns).
There is empirical evidence (electrical shocks, drugs, brain surgery, etc.) that support a ‘self as a pattern’ hypothesis. Of course, it’s far from proven but, to me, it’s the best explanation I’ve seen.
To us (humans), an emergent phenomenon would be meta-(beyond-)physical, by definition; a whole that language and reason recognize as something more than a mere sum of its parts – but physical/material nevertheless. We find it useful to acknowledge certain states of matter/energy existence and like to give them names: ‘wave’, when matter/energy moves a certain way (oscillates), and ‘self’ when chemical/physical patterns fire in our brains a certain way.