The Enlightenment - roll it back or forward?

[GloryofGreece]

You need a meaningful identity, and a reason for living. This is what the tribe provides for you.

Neo-liberals see everything in terms of the individual, which is wrong. It's every bit as wrong as how the Marxists see everything in terms of the collective.

You need a tribe. The tribe gives you belonging and meaning. It is within the context of the tribe that your individuality is truly able to manifest itself. The greatest individuals in human history belonged to an ethnicity. They had nothing in common with the neo-liberal individualist.

It seems to me that, when you lose identity as happens in neo-liberalism and in any form of Marxism, that is when the truly horrendous crimes are committed. The hype-individualist is beholden to nobody and the cog in the collective machine is disposable.

I like ideas and discussion like these. For me though it seems like the primary axiom for "identity" and/or meaning is something like father, mother, child. Not really "tribe".

[Okeefenokee]

There wasn't any of this navel gazing self doubt going on at the rodeo tonight.

There were some badass four year olds riding rodeo sheep, though.

[SuburbanFarmer]

If everything we are is simply evolution, then so is everything we do.

Correct.

Finally - he gets it.

Then we have no free will, and it's all pre-determined.
The human mind refuses to accept that.

[jediuser598]

The universe is nondeterministic. Next issue.

No free will != Determinism

Nondeterminism means you have free will. It means we cannot predict based on prior events what you are going to do given any stimuli with certainty. If we had no free will, then all our decisions should be completely predictable. Alas, not even a fucking electron is deterministic and totally predictable. Free will is encoded in the very universe down to the quanta.

So if someone proves we don't have free will, empirically, then the universe is deterministic?

[jediuser598]

Going to quote the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy because they know far more about philosophy than both of us put together:

3.3 Do We Have Free Will?
A recent trend is to suppose that agent causation accounts capture, as well as possible, our prereflective idea of responsible, free action. But the failure of philosophers to work the account out in a fully satisfactory and intelligible form reveals that the very idea of free will (and so of responsibility) is incoherent (Strawson 1986) or at least inconsistent with a world very much like our own (Pereboom 2001). Smilansky (2000) takes a more complicated position, on which there are two ‘levels’ on which we may assess freedom, ‘compatibilist’ and ‘ultimate’. On the ultimate level of evaluation, free will is indeed incoherent. (Strawson, Pereboom, and Smilansky all provide concise defenses of their positions in Kane 2002.)

The will has also recently become a target of empirical study in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Benjamin Libet (2002) conducted experiments designed to determine the timing of conscious willings or decisions to act in relation to brain activity associated with the physical initiation of behavior. Interpretation of the results is highly controversial. Libet himself concludes that the studies provide strong evidence that actions are already underway shortly before the agent wills to do it. As a result, we do not consciously initiate our actions, though he suggests that we might nonetheless retain the ability to veto actions that are initiated by unconscious psychological structures. Wegner (2002) amasses a range of studies (including those of Libet) to argue that the notion that human actions are ever initiated by their own conscious willings is simply a deeply-entrenched illusion and proceeds to offer an hypothesis concerning the reason this illusion is generated within our cognitive systems. Mele (2009) and O'Connor (2009b) argue that the data adduced by Libet, Wegner, and others wholly fail to support their revisionary conclusions.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#3.3

[jediuser598]

If everything we are is simply evolution, then so is everything we do.

Correct.

Finally - he gets it.

Then we have no free will, and it's all pre-determined.
The human mind refuses to accept that.

That is one conclusion.

Quantum Physics makes shit weird though, real weird. I don't pretend to understand it. Stuff like Retrocausality? Man I've got no idea lol.

[BjornP]

If everything we are is simply evolution, then so is everything we do.

Correct.

Finally - he gets it.

Then we have no free will, and it's all pre-determined.
The human mind refuses to accept that.

Are you able to bask your wings and fly?
Are you able breathe in space?
Can you circumvent the laws of nature by will alone?

No? Do those facts mean you have no free will?

No. It means you have free will within the limits of your own biology and the laws of nature. To say you don't have free will because you cannot do something outside your biology, is like lamenting your "lack of freedom" to turn into a butterfly.

[Hwen Hoshino]

You need a meaningful identity, and a reason for living. This is what the tribe provides for you.

Neo-liberals see everything in terms of the individual, which is wrong. It's every bit as wrong as how the Marxists see everything in terms of the collective.

You need a tribe. The tribe gives you belonging and meaning. It is within the context of the tribe that your individuality is truly able to manifest itself. The greatest individuals in human history belonged to an ethnicity. They had nothing in common with the neo-liberal individualist.

It seems to me that, when you lose identity as happens in neo-liberalism and in any form of Marxism, that is when the truly horrendous crimes are committed. The hype-individualist is beholden to nobody and the cog in the collective machine is disposable.

Yeah because most of history was tyranny, illiteracy, madness, murder, rape and strict codes to obey nobles and the clergy.

You need a meaningful identity, and a reason for living. This is what the tribe provides for you.

Neo-liberals see everything in terms of the individual, which is wrong. It's every bit as wrong as how the Marxists see everything in terms of the collective.

You need a tribe. The tribe gives you belonging and meaning. It is within the context of the tribe that your individuality is truly able to manifest itself. The greatest individuals in human history belonged to an ethnicity. They had nothing in common with the neo-liberal individualist.

It seems to me that, when you lose identity as happens in neo-liberalism and in any form of Marxism, that is when the truly horrendous crimes are committed. The hype-individualist is beholden to nobody and the cog in the collective machine is disposable.

I like ideas and discussion like these. For me though it seems like the primary axiom for "identity" and/or meaning is something like father, mother, child. Not really "tribe".

Why would you want your identity to be strictly tied to your fathers or mothers?

[Zlaxer]

If everything we are is simply evolution, then so is everything we do.

Correct.

Finally - he gets it.

The debate of free will vs determinism is a good one for all time....but the fact that everything a human is/does is a product of evilution does not mean everything is deterministic....dont conflate the two concepts....

Then we have no free will, and it's all pre-determined.
The human mind refuses to accept that.

[Zlaxer]

something relevant.....

The debate of free will vs determinism is a good one for all time....but the fact that everything a human is/does is a product of evilution does not mean everything is deterministic....dont conflate the two concepts....


And no STA - evolution does not rule out God.