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View Poll Results: A human being is...
...bio-automation, organic machinery. 1 14.29%
...sumthin’ more than bio-automation, not only organic machinery. 6 85.71%
Voters: 7. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 10-13-2019, 11:33 AM   #91
sexobon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by henry quirk View Post
Quote:
… “THEREFORE, what is free will?”

It is the agent who susses out his reasons (apprehending, assessing, concluding) then attempts to ‘do’ (bend and reshape causal chains, end causal chains, begin causal chains). It’s the endlessly recursive being who chooses, who responds, who sez ‘I hate spinach but I’m gonna eat it anyway’, who chooses to say ‘no’ (cuz they assess ‘no’ as right), instead of ‘yes’ (which would be easier and more profitable); it’s the guy who keeps goin’ round and with the fellow who denies his existence as agent cuz the guy is puzzled why another would self-denigrate so thoroughly (to choose to be less when one is more, that there is fuckin’ stupid).
Free will is one of many evolutionary synergistic effects produced by the combined components of the human organism. Free will is an agent THAT (not who) enables humans to suss out their reasons...etc. Humans can be born impaired without free will; or, be injured and lose their free will. The human organism must be able to produce the energy to sustain it. When all of the energy production is gone, so is the human regardless of how much weight in matter remains.

Humans with free will are, in turn, agents of social synergy WHOSE combined effects can put a man on the moon...etc. The less social a human is, the less important their free will is to others and what goes around comes around. Humans who use their free will to better separate themselves from society are free will tangents.
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Old 10-13-2019, 11:46 AM   #92
henry quirk
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“Free will is an agent THAT (not who) enables humans to suss out their reasons...etc.”

I disagree. Free will is the agent which is the person which, in your case is, sexobon, and, in my case, is Henry Quirk. That’s why I say I am a free will, not that I have free will.

#

“Humans can be born impaired without free will; or, be injured and lose their free will.”

No, they can be born as sumthin’ less (not an agent); they can be damaged and become less (not an agent).

#

“The human organism must be able to produce the energy to sustain it. When all of the energy production is gone, so is the human regardless of how much weight in matter remains.”

From the dark we come, to the dark we return. In between: we are free wills, each and every one.
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Old 10-13-2019, 12:26 PM   #93
sexobon
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Nonsense, you're not making the intellectual weight cut.

You've intertwined the discussed concepts of human, person, and free will like tw intertwines separate ideas to obfuscate dubious premises he requires others to accept to achieve his desired outcomes. Like him, you're bastardizing definitions towards that end. You're presenting more and more like a contrarian. Tw does it as a means of attention whoring without quite being a troll. The scientific term for it is OCD (NOT THAT OCD; rather, Obsessive Contrarian Disorder). You seem to have that need.

You HAVE "free will" and that means you can BE a "free spirit" if you want to.

'nuff said
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Old 10-13-2019, 12:57 PM   #94
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More than once Flint has asserted we think we’re special only cuz we feel that way.

Let’s see if we can establish the human being’s uniqueness, his specialness based on what we currently know.

We estimate the diameter of the known universe to be 93 billion light years.

A big place.

We estimate that only 4% of what comprises the universe is matter (and most of that is hydrogen in one state or another).

We infer the existence of what we call dark matter/energy. We can’t measure it but we need it to be so that our math works out.

Mostly though the universe is empty, a big nuthin’.

So: right off the bat, on the largest scale, we’ve established a specialness for ourselves. We’re rare cuz we’re matter. And we didn’t have to consult our feelings to do it.

As I say: most of that rare thing (matter) is hydrogen in various states. Organized matter gets cooked up in the heart of stars and is rarer still. Carbon, iron, oxygen, etc all far rarer than rare hydrogen. In fact complex or organized matter is so rare that it makes hydrogen look commonplace.

See? Specialness without feeling.

But we’re not done...

Space is vast. Even in our little on-the-edge-of-the-galaxy sol system distances are *ahem* astronomical. Because of these vast distances, the truly incomprehensible scale, we may never know how much rare organized and complex matter has become rarer still by becoming ‘alive’. What we can infer, however, if our sol system is representative, is living matter is rarer still, rarer than non-living organized matter, rarer than that ubiquitous hydrogen (that, again, makes up the bulk of all matter through the universe to the tune of only 4%).

Only here, on our little mud ball, is living matter apparent, and then pretty much only on the surface. The bulk of matter associated with Earth, that is Earth, is organized, complex, but lifeless.

So: without resorting to feelings, we can see our specialness is even more profound.

Can we go further?

Damn straight we can.

Interspersed among all the living matter (a very rare commodity) is sumthin’ even rarer still: self-aware matter, recursive matter, intending matter, purposeful matter, reasoning matter, matter that laughs, matter that imagines.

How marvelous!

Even more so cuz all this self-aware, recursive, intending, purposeful, reasoning, laughing, imagining matter comes in discrete parcels independent of other discrete parcels of self-aware, recursive, intending, purposeful, reasoning, laughing, imagining matter. Each parcel very much like the others but simultaneously so very different from all the other parcels.

Lord, we’re talkin’ about a level of specialosity that mind blowing! Surely I can go no further?

Hold on to your hats...

In a universe 93 billion light years across, mostly empty but for a smattering of matter (most of which is just electrons doin’ the tango with protons); in this vast empty place where organized matter is so rare as to make hydrogen ho-hum; in this Reality where living matter - insofar as we know - even rarer still, has spread out over the surface of one little dynamic rock and has given rise to remarkable self-directing, self-aware matter; in the midst of all this escalating specialness, two discrete parcels of matter are at stalemated on the essential nature of the individual.

No matter the scale: we are special. Even more so: each of us is special. In this big old, mostly empty universe, there’s only one of each of us (so much the same, so much not the same).

There’s your ‘magic’, plain as the nose on your face, and that there is fact, not feeling.
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Old 10-13-2019, 01:03 PM   #95
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“You've intertwined the discussed concepts of human, person, and free will”

Cuz I believe them, in context, to be synonymous.

#

“You HAVE "free will" and that means you can BE a "free spirit" if you want to.”

You can see it that way if you like, but that’s not how I understand free will.
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Old 10-13-2019, 01:06 PM   #96
sexobon
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Uh huh.
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Old 10-13-2019, 01:18 PM   #97
henry quirk
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Also: it’s just dumb to say I abuse definitions when even a casual review shows there is no consensus of what constitutes person, personhood, free will, agency, etc.

That is: none of this settled, so why do you stoop to insult?

If you disagree, fine, but why be a dick about it?
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Old 10-13-2019, 01:20 PM   #98
sexobon
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Uh huh.
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Old 10-13-2019, 04:46 PM   #99
henry quirk
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meh
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Old 10-13-2019, 05:02 PM   #100
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Old 10-13-2019, 05:17 PM   #101
Flint
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henry quirk

I guess I need to say this: I understand exactly what you're saying. I understand it because when I got up this morning I decided what to eat for breakfast. I thought about it, weighed various factors, and I could have made any decision in the whole world, and I was definitely in charge of the whole process. That's free will. We have that.

I understand that because everyone understands that. Every healthy, living 18-month old toddler who ever lived understands that they want a cookie, but they'll get in trouble if they get in the cookie jar-- so they can decide not to. They know that they have free will because it doesn't take any special understanding to know this-- all you have to do is wake up in the morning and "feel" what it "feels like" to be a human being.

So, since this is a toddler-level concept that every living person understands-- and nobody disagrees with you about, is there any level of discussion we can have that moves maybe one step beyond that?

Like, what is free will? How does it work? Where does it come from? Do those kinds of questions interest you? Because that's what I'm interested in.
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it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
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Old 10-13-2019, 05:34 PM   #102
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Also, you're describing the universe in terms of science textbooks from 30 years ago. What we've learned since then is that given the right combination of the commonplace elements that are present literally everywhere (cranked out of the fusion engine of every star that ever existed), it's almost impossible for organized matter to not start immediately forming. Life formed (or arrived) on Earth, we now know, as early as 4 billion years ago-- RIGHT after the Earth formed, while it was still what we assumed was an uninhabitable hellhole. We've found life on Earth in what should be considered impossible conditions. Everything we've learned indicates that life is most probably the DEFAULT state of matter. And, there's planets literally everywhere. Not to mention, the entire universe passed through a phase, very early on, where the AMBIENT TEMPERATURE of the entire universe was in the "Goldilocks zone" for forming life, with the abundant materials that were already present--including the liquid water that--by default-- wasn't boiling or freezing. So, turns out, life probably formed ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after the universe formed, and, it was probably, literally EVERYWHERE.

I don't know if this makes life "less special" but in terms of rarity-- scientists no longer think that life, nor the conditions for forming life, nor the conditions for sustaining life, are much more than what happens by default, pretty much as soon as matter exists.
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******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio

Last edited by Flint; 10-13-2019 at 05:48 PM.
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Old 10-13-2019, 06:06 PM   #103
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As for self-aware, purposeful, reasoning, imagining matter-- who knows? We don't know how rare that is. The one data point we have is that of all the species on Earth, humans are the only humans (if that's even the yardstick). Oh, except for the half-dozen other kinds of humans that lived as recently as 30,000 years ago.

Also, if you can tell me what an Octopus is thinking and why it doesn't have self-awareness, I'd love to hear it.
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******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
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Old 10-13-2019, 06:44 PM   #104
henry quirk
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“Like, what is free will? How does it work? Where does it come from? Do those kinds of questions interest you? Because that's what I'm interested in.”

That’s what we’ve been doin’: me, tellin’ you what I think free will is (who it is) and lookin’ for discussion and you tellin’ me I’m promotin’ magic. And you tellin’ me what you think free will is and me tellin’ you you’re describing zombies and bio-automation.

Stalemate.
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Old 10-13-2019, 06:56 PM   #105
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint View Post
Also, you're describing the universe in terms of science textbooks from 30 years ago. What we've learned since then is that given the right combination of the commonplace elements that are present literally everywhere (cranked out of the fusion engine of every star that ever existed), it's almost impossible for organized matter to not start immediately forming. Life formed (or arrived) on Earth, we now know, as early as 4 billion years ago-- RIGHT after the Earth formed, while it was still what we assumed was an uninhabitable hellhole. We've found life on Earth in what should be considered impossible conditions. Everything we've learned indicates that life is most probably the DEFAULT state of matter. And, there's planets literally everywhere. Not to mention, the entire universe passed through a phase, very early on, where the AMBIENT TEMPERATURE of the entire universe was in the "Goldilocks zone" for forming life, with the abundant materials that were already present--including the liquid water that--by default-- wasn't boiling or freezing. So, turns out, life probably formed ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after the universe formed, and, it was probably, literally EVERYWHERE.

I don't know if this makes life "less special" but in terms of rarity-- scientists no longer think that life, nor the conditions for forming life, nor the conditions for sustaining life, are much more than what happens by default, pretty much as soon as matter exists.
I know all this. The fact remains: matter, mostly in the form of hydrogen, is rare; organized matter (complex molecules) are rarer still; living matter is even rarer; and - rarest of all - is self-aware matter. We know of only one place where self-aware matter exists. We know of 2000 or so other places (exoplanets) and only a handful of those might support living matter (and possibility self-aware matter).

It would be great if the universe, our galactic cluster, our galaxy, our system, teemed with self-aware (or even just living) matter. My gut tells me not to hold my breath waiting for evidence.
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Last edited by henry quirk; 10-13-2019 at 07:09 PM.
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