Free-Will

Satyr wrote:

In my world-view IS is not OUGHT, because of choice - small as it may be.
In yours it is a synonym.
Ought implies a choice.

It's not a synonym to me, I don't view ought as implying a choice. Ought is the subject expressing its needs/desires/wants, over which it has no choice. Which doesn't mean they are external to the subject, but an internal part of the subject that is nonetheless immutable. I cannot choose to start liking to eat wood, or choose to start liking fucking horses. This doesn't mean these preferences are imposed upon me externally.

We just disagree I guess. It happens.

Then it ain't an ought...it's like saying the program ought to do what it cannot not do.
This 'ought', as I said...expressed an irrational prayer, a hope....a hope that what has been determined will include the positive.
"please oh 'god'...ahem, I man divine order, please be kind to me, or to yourself through me..."
If not a true believer accepts God's will, and does not complain, like Job.
"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven...." I shall not complain, afraid that more evil (negativity) shall be cast upon me.

Please spare me your complaints about liberals and Negroes.
Given your view about determinism you should not complain, but rejoice.
They know not what they are doing...but you, you know they are not free....so why hate them when they come to fuck your women?
It's all part of a divine plan....programming....will, whatever.

Yes....let's use the ol' modern final capitulation to fatalism and equality:
Let us agree to disagree.

I hope the universe has good things programmed for you.

This kind of argument is why philosophy not being a science is important anyways, there's no empirical way to completely measure and systemize 'free-will', there's no law, operational language etc. to refer to it yet the problem for a human being remains...for me there is definately 'free-will' but that doesn't mean that you are free to do anything but that you can do what you can as confined and defined by yourself and your circumstances...so simply in theory you can do anything possibly given that there is always some incredibly small chance that the circumstances will allow it except do exactly that, as somebody that doesn't express your inherited potential(another point of argument, but I'd say it just conservatively), whether you will or want to is irrelevant as long as the choice will be there...no need to dismiss free-will because it wont ever apply to most people unwilling to exert and suffer, i think myself that free will is like choice not like omnipotence.

Some oughts can be accomplished, others cannot.

I think you're flat out wrong about determinism, I don't think we'll change each other's opinions, and I think there are far more important things to worry about. Is that better than "let's just disagree"? The flaws you point out exist in your own idea of determinism, not mine.

Those who do not understand, will not, and I am sorry you are not able to see what I see.

Free-Will describes degrees in number of choices one becomes aware of and is able to make.
Both 'free' and 'will' does not refer to anything omnipotent, omniscient or in any way absolute.

Higher organism's are capable of higher levels of freedom; choices that forgo immediate gratification for a possible future, uncertain, goal.
This requires sophisticated minds.  
Animals and/or manimals cannot break free from their genetic programming, they can only react to the immediate....which is presented to them as options. They are always inclined to take the path-of-least-resistance.

Choice is the expression of freedom....it is not absolute. You never have infinite choices.
The stronger you are, the more options you have. The more intelligent you are, the more options you are aware of. A combination of the two establishes the range of human free-will.
But the only way it works is if all is not absolutely ordered. Otherwise its all a joke, a ruse, some kind of sadomasochistic game.
The opposite of order is not complexity....that's a description of a singularity.
Has anyone ever discovered such a phenomenon? Can anyone show it?
No...because it is entirely in the mind - idea. It can be spoken, painted, written, declared...but never shown: an immutable, indivisible thing...a whole...a One.
Does 'one' exist outside the mind?

AutSider wrote:

Some oughts can be accomplished, others cannot.

I think you're flat out wrong about determinism, I don't think we'll change each other's opinions, and I think there are far more important things to worry about. Is that better than "let's just disagree"? The flaws you point out exist in your own idea of determinism, not mine.

Those who do not understand, will not, and I am sorry you are not able to see what I see.

Stop complaining about those you disagree with. They 'ought' to know what you know, but they cannot....it is not determined for them as it has been for you.

From now on I will read all your posts attacking liberals and Negroes with some mirth, knowing its not your choice to attack those who, like you, have no choice.

May the divine order be kind to you.

A comedic and/or tragic irony: Determinists are in agreement with Abrahamics, in all things but how they worship and describe the absolute. In rhetoric only.

The idea implies that none are free to choose - in fact choice is an illusion - so the on who has attained the pinnacle of such an understanding should, at the very least, be able to forgive those who have not.

I can understand an inferior mind accusing and blaming others...but when you've had an epiphany, defending yourself is not to deny yourself the ability to forgive those who know not what they do...for they can do nothing else.
It's sadistic to attack those who have no choice in the matter.
Do we attack lions for being lions?
Do we attack a mountain for being a mountain?

We only attack those who chose to act in the way they did, because they had an option not to. But this is not the case here.
Why come to a philosophy forum,a t all, if you can change nothing?
This is basic Christian gospel.
The 'ignorant innocent of the impotent'. The last one with a choice was Adam....but it was accompanied with a threat as well.
"Do not eat from the tree of wisdom" conveniently placed in the Garden of Eden to taunt, to temp to test. Adam ha a choice, because it was alter revealed that to disagree with God's will, to exercise your human will, is to risk eternal damnation. Adam and Eve had no clue. They only knew that god disapproved of something.

Luckily determinism absolve us from such temptation. We, in fact, have no choice at all....they get rid of the taunt, the hypocrisy.
We are God's minions, and we cannot even think without his approval....masked in indifferent natural order.
Universal totalitarianism. No wonder Moderns seek escape in their minds, through their ideologies, their abstractions.

And once you've had the epiphany and rose above all others, why stay to accuse and blame those who have no choice?
Sadomasochism...the opposite side of the Hedonism coin.

Replace God with absolute Order.
Causality is universal 'wisdom'.

Free-will in the Bible is the issue.
A method to test righteousness, and deservedness.
Abraham's tale...the other Divine test using 'free-will' as bait.


Replace god's hypothetical 'justice' and 'kindness' for universal 'indifference', but 'rationality' but keep all the other non-direct anthropomorphic traits as is.

Abrahamism becomes Marxism, and Marxism becomes post-modernism, and many other philosophies altering the language to express the same Abrahamic concepts.  
How does universal Order, use its minions a.k.s. human agents to test their nature....a nature he's created.  

The Abrahamic one-god' is an anthropomorphic, linguistic version of the more Modern mathematical absolute Order.
Who can accuse anyone of failing to abide by absolute order?
More importantly...Who can blame another for abiding by natural order?

God is replaced by Order....His universal 'love' is replaced with 'positivity'....His 'wisdom' is replaced by 'reason'....'salvation' replaced by 'awareness'.
To become aware of god's presence is to understand that you do not break his laws.
In Modern times 'Hell' is replace by 'existence'. You can only hope not to suffer for long, or that universal order will be 'positive' towards you.
Everything is brought down to the mind....it implodes into a noumenon.
The 'beyond' is the 'esoteric', the 'internal', maintaining the experienced exoteric, as the hell on earth, the testing ground.
Salvation would be the awareness that you can do nothing to change your fate - to surrender completely - evidence of faith, in the bible, total submission, in Modernity it is also surrender - fatalism.

The ignorant, like I, know not what they do....or deny god's existence...but what of the 'chosen', by universal providence, to be saved from irrational ignorance, those that know better?
How can they accuse anyone of anything, knowing that there is no choice?

I think the biggest issue with the chaos 'free will' argument is it seems like a cop-out, because one cannot imagine there being something so unknowable, unintelligible, unable to be conquered. It seems a contradiction to label it, itself, if it is so unknowable in nature. And then to 'hide' the justification of free will, or even just 'will' (which determinists strawman into 'free') in there. 

Of course, all is flux, and the imagination of flux might be that of predictable waves of particles. Being a pattern, they think, implies a consciousness or at least the ability of a consciousness to know it; "predictable".

However, it can be argued that the super-imposition of predictability is just as, if not more so, a cop out just as the position of there being chaos.

This chaos issue has been the biggest problem I have with your (Satyr's) metaphysics - and what Apaosha put into (probably) better words.

I understand how one could concoct fake frontiers by superimposing consciousness onto art's mistakes. Using that as an example, let's say the art was damaged by a storm. One would argue the damage says something about the artist's talent/brush strokes/intended message - this is ridiculous on its face. However, they might further argue that it says something about the failure of an artist to preserve it: they didn't keep it somewhere safe, they didn't know a safe place, they sold it to a careless buyer, etc. This appears true, but the idea of it just being chaos appears to hamper the ability to make those inquiries in its own way.

With the latter, I imagine an argument (against) of the sort that: one cannot hypothesize on things such as storm damage if there is/was no (other) evidence to suggest it as the cause. Working bottom<>up, it remains ignorance and chaotic - and one has to come to a probabilistic conclusion (in this case, that it's post modern crap) by what evidence is available. (Granting charitable interpretations to everything, countenancing/presuming the best, isn't always the most logical or probable; however much an optimist/idealist might object and aggressively pursue anyway.)

Basically, when one makes a probabilistic judgment, they are countenancing 'chaos' already, by leaving opportunity open to different approaches. Those who are committed to determinism might say that when they've acted on a probability, one has chosen definitively one way and the ignorance was just that: ignorance, not chaos.

But again, this confuses one's ignorance for 'chaos'. An objective, not subjective, 'chaos' is what's at issue. The determinist is saying 'chaos' is just a subjective ghost of ignorance. Satyr, at least, appears to be saying that the superimposition of order, predictability, onto a reality that's inherently unpredictable, is what's at issue.

But the determinist wonders if it begs the question: how do you know? How do you know that there's something unpredictable?
On the flipside, the non-determinist (Satyr's sort) can propose the similar but opposite: how do you know? How do you know that there's something predictable in that real flux, or ignorance of yours?

I can certainly see an authenticity argument for Satyr's representation of the issue. If it is ignorance, one has to recognize it as such. Treating it as some 'grand order' appears only like a superimposition of the rare ability for greater consciousness. It is precisely the rarity which makes it valuable, but at the same time, unlikely. When one is exercising consciousness, they are doing so to fight other humans or the environment; not necessarily the gods, or reality. Existence is agon, but it's only so in relation to one's will to survive - not in relation to the world attempting to destroy you, like it's some conscious monster. The gods are only symbols of visceral subjective reactions to the world; personifications.

Slaughtz wrote:

But the determinist wonders if it begs the question: how do you know? How do you know that there's something unpredictable?
On the flipside, the non-determinist (Satyr's sort) can propose the similar but opposite: how do you know? How do you know that there's something predictable in that real flux, or ignorance of yours?

Isn't this is where the limitation of language emerges to describe flux? "Knowing" or "Truth" is not an absolute state, it is a superior form of pattern recognition.
A more accurate way to say "The Truth is there is no Truth." would be: "The most consistent Pattern is that there aren't any Absolutes."

Impulso Oscuro wrote:

Slaughtz wrote:

But the determinist wonders if it begs the question: how do you know? How do you know that there's something unpredictable?
On the flipside, the non-determinist (Satyr's sort) can propose the similar but opposite: how do you know? How do you know that there's something predictable in that real flux, or ignorance of yours?

Isn't this is where the limitation of language emerges to describe flux? "Knowing" or "Truth" is not an absolute state, it is a superior form of pattern recognition.
A more accurate way to say "The Truth is there is no Truth." would be: "The most consistent Pattern is that there aren't any Absolutes."

Good point, maybe. Hurts my brain even beginning to try and combine that with Propertarian 'no-is-ism'.

But, here the declaration in my post was acting as a representation of a cognition of a pattern, not the 'truth' itself. So that distinction, between 'knowing' and 'truth' is still relevant.

So, roughly: "How do you cognize that (absolute/pattern)?"
The question, to even ask 'how do you know?', then becomes unclear; becomes nonsensical because it's asking for one of four (or even five/six) things: subjective certainty (how are you confident in that absolute?), objective certainty (how did you deduct that absolute?), subjective cognitivity (how are you confident in that probability?) or material evidence (what is the material evidence for that? here's the falsifiable evidence?).

You might be (and I am) tempted to conflate subjective cognition with material evidence; but the question is asking something subtly different. Asking for material evidence is studies, observations. Asking for an explanation of confidence (subjective cognitivity) is asking how one is performing act of confidence itself (as a subject) which can be materially objective or reflectively subjective (former: 'my brain's neurotransmitters do this on a scan and etc. etc.' latter: 'I first trusted my senses, did etc. etc.').

It is in this last distinction of subjective confidence that one can be possibly asking one of two questions when inquiring about subjective certainty and one of two questions when subjective cognitivity. But one can argue they're the same just as well.

This is the last time I'll be repeating.

Order = a predictable, consistent, repeating, sequence - pattern - ENERGY
Chaos = an inconsistent, non-repeating, sequence - non-pattern, random - ENERGY

What is sequencing?
We'll have to go to Heidegger for this.
Space = possibility.
Ergo, perceptible matter/energy is probability.
What is the sequence?
Oscillations (vibrations), referencing the metaphor of String Theory.
Space is oscillating, or possibility for interaction within one or more spatial dimensions.
Every types of matter/energy is an interpretation of this oscillation.
Each types has a particular sequence where it interacts, or can interact, within a dimension.
This is its vibration/oscillation sequence. Time is a measure of the sequence's frequency - its speed.  
Spatial dimensions are fragmenting - expanding space/time - complexity.  

Existence is Energy - dynamic, interactive.
Non-existence is static, non-interactive - by definition it is non-existent.

What does the absence of an absolute mean?
It means that no matter how consistent a sequence is, it is not absolutely so.
It is never perfect. The degree of its inconsistency is a measure of its randomness - chaos.

Conciousness evolved to deal with this infinitesimal degree of inconsistency - it is real time reaction - it deals with the unforeseen - degrees accumulate over time.
Consciousness would be unnecessary if all were ordered - or the level of consciousness we experience would be unnecessary, superfluous.
Nature is frugal.
All would be automated. Nothing would be selected because all would be programmed, inevitable.

Just as strength is a measure of weakness, and knowledge is a measure of ignorance, freedom is a measure of independence from order.
Nothing is ever absolute...just as there is no omnipotence, no omniscience, no absolute freedom.

So, organisms are a high degree of probability (order). Symmetry and proportionality have been defined as a measure of previous inherited order displayed as physical symmetry; proportionality is a sacrifice to randomness necessitating functionality, due to chaos.
If all were ordered all would be perfectly symmetrical, increasing over time. Order creates order.
The Biblical conundrum of 'evil' and how does an absolutely good loving benevolent god create it, still stands.
How does a perfect, ordered universe create imperfect beings like us?
Is it a test, a joke, a one-God masturbating? In itself this explanation hints at a contradiction.

Perfection needs nothing.
The alternative method is to redefine all this as perfect. A very self-serving, and seductive method that simply renames whatever 'is' to whatever we desire to accommodate our theory.
It's the same method implied in the idea that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. Every degenerate can simply baptise whatever he wishes into whatever he wishes.
This is why degenerate refuse to define the words they use, and why they reject all external standards, like symmetry and proportionality.
Why would perfection change?
The degenerate will answer: perfection is change.
What would perfection change into?
The degenerate will answer: all change is perfect.
These types of word games suffice for degenerates.
It implies that all that exists is perfect and beautiful, and therefore deserves 'respect', survival, replication, preservation.
All are made in the image of God, as the Christians put it.  

But why do we suffer?
Is that perfection?
Why are we ignorant...is our ignorance perfection?
Why do we evolve, or why does environment evolve? What is 'selected' if all is perfect?
Why do we need to grow, to develop, if we are already 'perfect'?

We perceive pattern even though we do not will it. It is automatic.
If we perceive it a degree of order is present. Organisms are ordering, dependent on order, so they evolved to perceive and appreciate (judge) order, to consume and assimilate order, to be attracted by order; desiring and creating order, either internally or externally.
Meanwhile chaos is increasing, creating what we experience as linear time. This is the experience of need/suffering - agon, existential war, struggle. We fight one another and cosmic decay.

Free-Will is an expression of choice: how much and how many.
Strength & Awareness.
Awareness increases our perception of options, relative to our environment - the costs/benefits of each.
Strength increase hoe many of our perceived options we can take advantage of, how many choices we can choose.  

Each choice made determines - along with every other living organism's choices and every interaction, our next available options.
Most of them are automated, programmed into us as living organisms.  We appreciate those after-the-fact, as if they were made for us, or by some external will.
Just as primitive man experienced his own conscience, his emerging self-awareness, as an alien consciousness in his brain.
Modern man perceives the automatic, intuitive, instinctual, choices he constantly makes as inevitable, as part of some cosmic design, as if someone else were making them.
reprogramming himself is called cultivation.
Cultivation in accordance to a MEME...a set of ideals, principles.
MEMES override or accentuate GENES.  
Memetic programming can usurp genetic programming, by selectively repressing and socially selecting, or by self-repressing, sublimating, venting redirecting.
Self-deceit is a form of self-programming, governed by a social ideal or a defensive motive.  
But there are no absolutes, so this process is never perfect, never absolutely successful.  
It must be hones, just as natural selection selects successful genetic combinations.
Genes = memories, encoded in neurons and then in brain-cells. genes also fail because nothing is perfect.

So, two factors contribute to our disbelief that we have any control over our own destiny:
1- Most choices are made unconsciously and we consciously appreciate them after-the-fact, as if someone else made them.
This is the determinism of GENES.  
2- What choices become available to use is not only the product of out previous choices but the choices of every living organism made, and also the interactions of every pattern and non-pattern in the cosmos.
This determines what options are available to us to choose from.

We can add the Memetic factor that limits what options are made available or programmed to not be perceived - such as by controlling how we interpret what we perceive.
this is, indeed, an external Will imposing restrictions on out choices....so we've grown accustomed, socially programmed, to surrender, to submit, to accept this, as a matter of survival - we are social organisms, genetically programmed to seek others, to tolerate and cooperate with others, to self-repress so as to get-along with others.
In fact to indoctrinate submissive spirits you can teach them to reject free-will - the perfect mass mind control idea.  
How can a slave escape, when he's convinced there's nowhere to escape to.

We're in the Matrix, Neo...

They do the same with the concepts of human nature and of the power of psychology.
They convince the masses that psychology is bogus and that there is no human nature, and that nobody can ever know you because you, of course, are far too 'complex' to be known and controlled. This makes the individual all the more knowable and controllable.
Those you are convinced - conveniently believing that they are too complicated to be manipulated, or too deep, or too smart...are the easiest to manipulate and control.
Arrogance can be a symptom of over-compensating stupidity, like machismo can be a symptom of over-compensating emasculation and insecurity.

A final note:
It doesn't matter if you are convinced you are free-willed or absolutely determined.
It's a minor form of awareness, because it doesn't change anything.
Most behave as if they did have free-will, while they declare that there is no such thing, because it's can be surrendered to automatic reactions, ingrained in the organism over centuries of natural selection.
An animal does not have to know or understand why it wants to copulate, why it risks life and limb to fuck...its part of its nature.
A manimal need not know nor understand what free-will is, it may even deny its existence....to any degree...but it is not necessary, because it is ingrained in its genetics and it is why it is conscious and self-conscious.
A Christian doesn't have to understand the inherent contradictions in its behaviour, relative to its beliefs, because its acts in accordance to its nature, and it has been given a set of excuses to justify the dissonance that suffice.

Fatalism
II was born of a woman who was a fatalist - a Christian of the a-typical sort - a natural stoic, though she had no way of knowing what the term meant.
Her favourite phrase was one that hearkened back to ancient times, an old-European saying: "It is all written" describing in its own way determinism as some universal programming we can all appreciate after-the-fact.
No matter what occurred it was 'written', it was meant to be.
A self-comforting idea that absolves the self of all responsibility, though not causality.
To be ignorant of what you can never change, is simply saying "I exist".
To admit that it is 'written' says 'I am helpless'.

But it's one thing to be ignorant and another to know, from an early age, that this is so, and still not be affected by this knowledge.
It's why I say Nihilists cannot help but self-deceive, contradicting their own beliefs, their own principles, and then manufacturing excuses to explain why they act in ways that contradict what they think they know.

This can be perplexing, making many turn to mysticism to find some explanation, or to psychology, or by simply linguistically baptising concepts, renaming them using new words, pretending to have found a resolution in this ritual.
But the answer is simpler. Nihilism, and the linguistic absolutism it is built upon, is about survival and protecting self, and, more importantly, it is about protecting the ego.
The ego, that part of the self that begins to perceive the rest of the self....its presence and its past; the ego that is slowly becoming self-aware - aware of self - and is finding the experience to be distressing, unflattering, unbearable.
One would expect that to know that all is absolute order, following an inevitable path, that one would not be accusatory, damning, angry at others, for doing and being what they have no way of not being and doing.
If there is no 'choice' then what choice does anyone have?
If they were to kill your family, what could they have done to change this inevitability?
When one knows this, how can they be angry, accusatory towards anything and anyone?

But it doesn't work like that for absolutist Nihilists.
The dogma is a psychological tool to relieve the ego, not to excuse other egos.
It's a way of self-comforting, absolving the ego of all culpability because it has no choice in the matter.
But this generosity is not to be extended to anything or anyone else.
The knowledge that all is inevitable, that nothing has a choice, that all is programmed, written, determined, has no affect on one's anger towards his own fate.
There is no God to hate, to accuse, to scream at, now that the concept has been totally abstracted into a numerical value: One, whole, absolute.
So, towards what can a fatalist direct its wrath, its fears, its dissatisfaction other than at the conscious agencies through which this 'written' fate unfolds. They become the targets of his dissatisfaction towards what is fated, what is written and cannot be unwritten.

If anyone has followed my opinions on what I think Nihilism is he or she will understand, through how I define and describe Nihilism, that it is a mental contraption, a dis-ease, projecting outwards, revealing itself through symptoms that take time to fully develop.
It's a coping mechanism, trying to cope with growing self-awareness, exposing it to possibilities it cannot fully process nor understand.
Anxiety grows into fear, and fear produces anger, as a defensive reaction, and anger leads to hate, indicating a psychosomatic rejection.
The only emotional antidote that has evolved to deal with this is lust, which develops into the bonding emotion of habituation called 'love'.
An enlightened fatalist will eventually reach the point of 'loving' his once rejected fate, as an act of surrender to forces he cannot perceive nor change.
The mind protecting the impotent ego with the idea that it could not have done anything, of any significance, to have determined the outcome differently.
But the unconscious mind cannot capitulate to the conscious mind's tactics. It becomes angry at others, as carriers of his fate, resenting himself, his own surrender, though them.
Sadness, that final total surrender, has yet to be reached, especially in younger spirits.
Though they believe nobody has a choice not to do what they've done, resentment still spontaneously boils forth projecting dissatisfaction with what has been determined.

The limits of the will's power

In between two masses the will focuses a tiny orgnism's infinitesimal aggregate energies.
These infinitesimally small aggregate energies can produce cascading reactions, or be multiplied through other means, like money - control of resources - or idealogical impact - fertilizing multiple minds - but though the will's power is multiplied it still remains trapped in-between these two masses.

One, is the immutable, past, forever inaccessible to the Will, and so unchangeable. The entirely of every choice, every interaction, is included.
Two, the ongoing fluctuations of every conscious and/or unconscious choice being made by living organisms - impacting the options available to the Will - but far more significant the ongoing interactions between Energies - both patterned and random - also severely impacting the options presented to the ego.

In-between these two masses, that are out of the individual's control, is where the ego operates - the will being its focus.

Self = sum of all psychosomatic interactions, both after and before birth - inherited and personal experiences/memories = information.
Ego = the lucid part of the self. The part of the brain/mind becoming aware of itself.

We can appreciate why the ego feels like it is impotent, helpless, a 'victim' of circumstances it can do nothing about.
By comparison its power is small.
To preserve self-esteem it uses hyperbole - hyper-inflating its self-assessment - or it uses hypobole - deflating its self-assessment, but pulling all down to deal with the implications: if self is to surrender, then all must surrender.

As with everything...Nihilism defines words in ways that makes them outlandish and absolute, just to escape the implications.
For example, if you really hate yourself you will define 'self' as something so absurd that it is impossible to find, or to justify.
This is what I mean by 'disconnecting words' from reality, or rather, from using words not as they were intended - as connectors between noumena and phenomena - but as excuses, as noetic inversion points.
In this case free-will is defined in ways that are absurd...either declaring the 'will' absolutely 'free' or declaring it absolutely 'un-free'.
But the concept has two words associated with it - and the second 'will' is equally abused by Modern degenerates.
It becomes another way of saying 'god's will' - 'will' becomes something independent of life-forms....and only the anthropomorphic element is erased.
God is preserved as some unconscious 'force' - absolute order...and momentum/movement is renamed 'will'.
The general concepts in Abrahamism are retained, but only the names are replaced to rid them of their infantile qualities.
The same slavishness, the same fatalism, the same surrender...being sold to the same herd. Recycled, repackaged, relabelled and resold as 'new and improved'.

The 'one-god' is not dead....he was discovered as being defined in childish absurdity that would not work with more literate herds; with easy access to information the slaves of the past had no access to.
The same Abrahamic cocnept had to be rehabilitated, refurbished, made shiny new.
But that's the 'advantage' of nihilism. It is unconstrained by integrity, nor by anything external - natural order, reality, is of no interest, other than as what 'ought to be escaped'....other than a source of pain, and suffering, other than a source of insecurity and insult.
It can continuously rename the same concepts and return them into circulation, knowing that the same minds that had the older version taken away, are desperate for an upgrade.
They have a market ready and willing for a replacement - having become habituated with the product. They are [preaching to a choir that has had its church burned down.
Spin-doctoring, a few tweaks, and voila!!! The same crap delivered on a brand new platter.
The herd has never understood the words they became obsessed and addicted to....they never delved into the meaning, the source....they used them and they worked.
They provided pleasure and utility, and they did not want to know anything more. What would the packaging the code, matter to them?
They covet what the words gave them.
They need the safety, the certainty, the comfort, the pleasure, but what they receive is fatalism.
There's nothing more controllable than a slave that has surrendered his/her will to fate. With no Abrahamism 'God' there's simply inescapable fate.

The underlying message is that the consequences of an individual's actions- both positive and negative - ought to be distributed evenly so as to make all judgements, and the choices these result in, inconsequential...or as meaningless as possible.
Group techniques/technologies are the equalizers.
After all, all are 'victims' of circumstances - causality - and all have no culpability in anything but only in 'accepting' his fate - echoes of 'sinfulness' and submission to 'God's will', change into Marxist 'sharing and distributing' wealth: 'to each according to his needs'.


Christianity does not only represent the corruption - infestation - of Hellenism by Judaism, but also the corruption of Judaism by Hellenism.
For this reason, Islam being closest to Judaism shares a hatred for Christianity.
It is too close to the Hellenic spirit to be tolerated - and its corruption by Hellenic spirit, makes it dangerous.
For the virus the host's immune system is the undesired disease.

For those who need to visualize concepts, I offer my own in regards to free-will.

Think of existence as a volcano, continuously churning up magma.
The mouth of the volcano is the Big Bang.
as the magma flows down the mountain it cools and solidifies - this is the creation of the immutable past, That which determines and has been determined, and cannot be altered.
Free-Will is a possibility that occurs on the magma's 'wave' when it is still hot and liquid - interactive.
The individual can wade through the magma, being a particle of it, with great difficulty, fighting against eh 'thickness and heat of interactivity, i.e., flux.
This 'wading' is choice, directed by towards an objective, i.e., Will.
The time-period is short before the magma solidifies and gives way to a continuous flow that pushes the individual - momentum, Heidegger's 'thowness'.
Small direction giving is all will is....and its 'freedom' is a measure of the degree of resistance it can wade through - its Will to Power - Power of Will.
This only applies to living particles within the magma flow - all else simply flows along paths-of-least-resistance, requiring no will and no effort - ergo only life experiences existence as need/suffering, i.e., agon.

I view it differently. You look at Will as something adversarial to existence or past, and past as something to be struggled against or overcome.
I view past as myself. I am the effect of past. It is not something that imposed itself upon me, it is something that I am the effect of.
So in that analogy I wouldn't be struggling against the wave of lava, I would be the wave itself. Past manifesting as presence as it moves into the future.

I don't think I've expressed this very well in the earlier discussion but there is I believe a false dichotomy at the heart of free will ideas that isn't addressed. Basically that the Will is something subject to determinism, that the past manipulates the Will or forces it to make certain choices. I don't see that dichotomy. I see the Will as a manifestation of past. When I will something it's not just me the human apaosha willing it, it's the entirety of the past that brought me about, and that act of Will is the ongoing culmination and fulfillment of that entire past.
The way it's usually viewed is that either "I" can do as I like without reason or causality (free will), or "I" can't do anything because everything "I" do is forced upon me due to something else determining my actions (determinism).
I made a thread a long time ago about the actor/act dichotomy in language: that there is a subject "I" that performs an action "thought", "I think". And that this suggests a separation between actor and act. In the same way, conventional free will theories generally assume that the Will is something distinct from causality that is either utterly tyrannized by it or free from it. So the debate will focus around whether or not this disconnected entity "I" is free from or subject to past, the external adversary. This dichotomy is an artifact of language forcing a subject/action preconception and isn't valid.
I'm saying that "I" is the past, is the action, that there is no dichotomy. Thought therefore existence.

apaosha wrote:

I view it differently. You look at Will as something adversarial to existence or past, and past as something to be struggled against or overcome.

Not entirely adversarial.
Man wants to 'grow', become 'better' so there's an element of 'overcoming' one's past, as this has been inherited, otherwise there would no progress and no need for judgement nor will. No need for consciousness above a certain level, at all.

apaosha wrote:

I view past as myself. I am the effect of past. It is not something that imposed itself upon me, it is something that I am the effect of.

Yes, you are past that is continuously interacting in the present, with both order and chaos.
Past manifests as presence, but presence cannot remain totally in agreement with the past, otherwise all you would follow the same paths towards the same outcomes.

All men have weaknesses and failings they must 'correct' - there is no growth, no advancement, if all simply adheres to the past. Man is not a spectator of God's will.
Chaos necessitates adaptation, whether you like it or not. This forces you to adapt, one way or another. Adapt or die.

apaosha wrote:

So in that analogy I wouldn't be struggling against the wave of lava, I would be the wave itself. Past manifesting as presence as it moves into the future.

Then you profess to being God.
The wave does not include chaos, but only order. Chaos is included in the final flow, as what is unpredictable about it - what is fluctuating.

If we change metaphors and use the surfer, then order/chaos is the ocean currents and waves, and you are the one who adjusts to the waves that are a product of currents interacting with winds; both the wave and the one who wishes to remain free from it are a manifestation of past, in a constant relationship - a state fo relating.
Life is about keeping your head above water.
You are both the wave and its inevitable victim - resentiment. You are both a manifestation of past, and its inevitable victim.
Chaos order make you possible, and also lead to your death.    

apaosha wrote:

I don't think I've expressed this very well in the earlier discussion but there is I believe a false dichotomy at the heart of free will ideas that isn't addressed. Basically that the Will is something subject to determinism, that the past manipulates the Will or forces it to make certain choices. I don't see that dichotomy. I see the Will as a manifestation of past. When I will something it's not just me the human apaosha willing it, it's the entirety of the past that brought me about, and that act of Will is the ongoing culmination and fulfillment of that entire past.

Willing is the focus of life's energies....it does not apply to the non-living. It is made possible by the past and it is also in antagonism with it, because the past also determines life's mortality.
You seem to be in agreement with Abrahamism and its 'god's Will' analogy.
All is ordered, and you are but a piece of the ordering becoming aware of itself in the whole. This is the premise of Abrahamism and Magian spirituality.
Fatalism.  

The Greeks expressed the struggle as a war....We are struggling agaisnt and with the forces of nature. We are both a manifestation of past, and the wilful agencies of its contradiction - this is why Nihilism emerges and dominates the spirit of many.
The past is determined but the future has not been determined - we participate, along with all existence, in its determination.  

apaosha wrote:

The way it's usually viewed is that either "I" can do as I like without reason or causality (free will), or "I" can't do anything because everything "I" do is forced upon me due to something else determining my actions (determinism).

This mirrors typical either/or Absolutism - if not God then I am absolutely free; and if not absolutely free then I must be an absolute slave.

apaosha wrote:

I made a thread a long time ago about the actor/act dichotomy in language: that there is a subject "I" that performs an action "thought", "I think". And that this suggests a separation between actor and act. In the same way, conventional free will theories generally assume that the Will is something distinct from causality that is either utterly tyrannized by it or free from it. So the debate will focus around whether or not this disconnected entity "I" is free from or subject to past, the external adversary. This dichotomy is an artifact of language forcing a subject/action preconception and isn't valid.
I'm saying that "I" is the past, is the action, that there is no dichotomy. Thought therefore existence.

The artefact of language is the binary, i.e., either absolute freedom or absolute incarceration.
The subject is entirely determined by an immutable past - that includes the consequences of order and chaos - meaning it cannot be absolutely comprehended nor does it repeat exactly. The chaos/order energies interact in the present, i.e., liquidity of flux, and in this state of liquidity does the Will direct the organism towards an alternative - within its field of possibilities - determined by its awareness and its strength.
Consciousness evolved to deal with the ongoing interactivity of chaos and order - and the unpredictability this produces.

Within this slight unpredictability is where Will can impose itself, directing itself, contrary to past - but not entirely, but to a degree.
Like a surfer directs the board, upon a wave.
The wave is solidifying, in the background - becoming past - and the surfer is riding the wave in the present, slightly modifying his previous course.
The wave is not entirely ordered....it is order/chaos, but the surfer can only perceive this as the wave's churning and bubbling and flowing.
His course is past made presence, but in the present he is a dynamic participant in the direction he will take; determining his own fate. Will he fall off the board and drown - swept by the undercurrent - or will he keep himself above water, surfing the wave, by adjusting himself on the board and the board to the wave?

Will is not a passive agency. In lower life-forms it is less able to impose a divergence, so plants are static when compared to mammals. In more sophisticates organisms, will determines course adjustment, direction, which determines all future options.
Humans can project across space/time, overcoming the immediate...so will, for our species, is even more dynamic, i.e., free.
It can adjust to potential future wave fluctuations, ignoring the immediate wave's dynamics - or both at the same time.
This is why man suffers more, and is more restless and able to find contentment, like simple creatures can...or simpletons can.

But you've hit on a fundamental aspect of Nihilism. Nihilism is necessary...its the degree to which the past is contradicted that becomes destructive. It's nihilism's either/or absolutism that makes it destructive - nihilism is a total inversion - in theory - of the wave's course and its nature. It is impossible, other than in theory, using language to describe he event. It cannot be done in real-time in the real world.
But man, especially males, constantly contradict or challenge their inheritance - they challenge all forms of authority, even natural order - its how they think 'outside the box' and offer growth to the tribe.
Women and men are in antagonism - conflict - because females can only remain true to the status quo - to inheritance, to the chaos/order interactivity. This is why females are representations of nature, and males are representations of of dominating or challenging nature, or every kind of authority.  
Nihilism, is therefore, hyper-masculinity, over-compensating for their innate femininity - and this is obvious in the current identity crisis where natural identities, like male/female are being dismissed altogether.
Masculinity is not what denies or dismisses or ignores the feminine - as a representation of natural order - it is what dominates and strives to direct it, adding human order to it - genes to memes.

In the metaphor, I used, I did not describe an agency, within the lava flow that went contrary to the magma flow, but to a portion of the magma directing itself perpendicular, in relation to the flow.
There was minimal antithesis in the horizontal plane, not vertically.
The surfer does not surf agaisnt the wave, but along with it - i.e., past is directed by Will.....inanimate matter/energy simply flows along with the wave - what resistance it produces is due to its interactivity with other patterns often placing it in conflict with the flow, creating surface disturbances - foam, to use Sloterdijk's metaphor.
Non-living matter/energy simply flows along paths-of-least-resistance...and only life can choose to flow relatively contrary to it.
The flow being a metaphor for momentum as this has been determined in the past.

Free-Will is not an antithesis to past, represented by the flow of the magma, in the metaphor, but a perpendicular movement, along its flow, which is a slight resistance to it.
This is a metaphorical representation of degree, rather than an absolutist either/or - Nihilism would be a movement contrary to the flow, which is only possible noetically - that is in theory in the mind.
The degree of Nihilism represented by how contrary to the flow it is, entirely dependent on abstraction, because in reality existence cannot be negated, but only in the mind.

Free-Will as I define and describe it, is not an antithesis to past.
Past is the flow, and free-will is a choice of movement within its momentum - its flow- that is determined by a continuously increasing past, and by every other existence participating in the flow - represented in the previous metaphor, by the magma's consistency, its thickness, and heat, gradually cooling and solidifying as immutable past.

It's in the present/presence that Will has a degree of freedom in relation to all else that exists - especially within its immediate spatial vicinity - space being another term for possibilities.
So, an organism is a probability - order- participating along with other order, and chaos - randomness, in existence, i.e., flow, flux, interactivity. As a life form it can direct itself within this flow - like a fish can swim within a river's flow down the mountainside. The direction of the water-flow is linear time - Nihilism would be swimming agaisnt the flow, but only in your mind, because this is impossible, in reality.
A fish would imagine itself swimming up to the source of the river - big Bang.
God, in the Abrahamic definition, would be the river imagined from the perspective of an 'outside' the river flow. Witching the river flow, like Sidharta, from the static, solidity of an imagined shore - boundary that encompasses the concept 'river'.

The modern conception of universe is the encompassing of existence,a s one would encompass the idea of 'river' from a noetic external point, outside its flow.
in fact there is no 'outside', but only in the mind. There si only flow, and the mind must make sense of itself and the world from within it, and not from a noetic 'outside' - Bottom<>Up thinking.
From within the flow - i.e., existence - one can only experience multiplicity of divergence, and no singularity.
to construct a singularity the mind must exit the flow, in theory....in fact it is simply detaching itself from existence, to create an esoteric space/time, with distinct boundaries and absolute all-encompassing order - oneness, whole.

The name 'river' is, in our metaphor, what correlates to the concept 'god' and/or 'universe'.
God simply adds the implication of telos - intent - which is not part of the abstraction universe.

Communist social-engineering is encapsulated in this quote:

Engels, Friedrich wrote:

Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence of natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws and in the possibility this gives us of systematically making them work towards definite ends…
Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on the knowledge of natural necessity.

When others do it, guided by a contrary ideal, they call it 'eugenics' - when they do it they call it 'nurturing'.

The present is the manifestation of the past, but it is in flux, so it is the only plane where organism can alter course, or make a choice, or manipulate its course, slightly diverging the past's direction.
But conciousness cannot experience the 'present', due to the time required to process stimuli - data - so consciousness exists perceiving the past, after-the-fact- as an immediate past, compared to a distant past; the choice has already been made, the reaction already performed, by the time the mind becomes aware, existing in-between an immutable past - God - and a uncertain future - Satan.

Biology is slow to change, compared to the mind's speed of perception.
Therefore, what we call 'free' and what we call 'will', if properly defined and understood, is a discretion of nurturing, occurring in real-time, eventually passed on to future generations, if the organism's reactions and choices are adaptive and quick, i.e., effective/efficient.

Existence is dynamic - i.e., flux, continuous interactivity. Therefore, past does not exist, but manifests as existence as presence - a falling away. It cannot be altered. It exists as memory, forever unkowable in any absolute way.
The Abrahamic one-god, is a representation of this past - Spinoza made it secular, describing the exact same concept as 'immanence, as a loyal Magian thinker'.
Future does not exist, but is in the process of being determined in the present.

All life are intentional agencies participating in the determination of the future - non-living energies - both patterned (order) and non-pattered (chaos) are intentionality agencies.
An individual 'will' is therefore a participant in the determination of the future - a nexus between a falling away, determined past, and the being determined future.
But, like I said, the organism consciousness can never experience the present, as it can only process data after-the fact - Meditation is a discipline that attempts to bridge the temporal distance between past and present, to achieve presence - it can only approach the present, never be cosnciuos of presence.
Appearance is the interpretation of presence, after-the-fact.
Ergo, life may confuse its own automated choices and reactions as belonging to an external will - evaluating its biologically programmed reactions, after-the-fact, as if someone and/or something else was responsible.

Genes - DNA, are biological memories, i.e. programmed reactions to stimuli.
Experiences are memories gathered by an organism during its lifetime accentuating and/or sublimating genetic memories - this is nurture versus nature.
Nurturing, a.k.a. cultivation, is the overwriting or accentuation of genetic programming. An individual can intervene upon its own genetic automatic reactivity - its impulses - through training, over long periods of time - cultivation of second-nature, i.e., civilized species.
Memes versus Genes.

Past = God. In Nihilistic 'emoting' it is absolute because it is named - given a designation, a symbol/word.
The word represents its wholeness, which is absent in actuality.

Present, or Presence, is another word for Existence. That which is dynamic, is made present. Appearance is the subjective interpretation of presence.
In Abrahamism it is represented by Satan , the theoretical 'liar, who is really a representative of the 'truth' of existence. Everything is inverted by Nihilism....in all its variants.
'Truth', properly defined, is not an absolute, but a reference to perspective, to how a subjective mind's related to an objective reality. We say something is 'true' if we judge the relationship - the perspective, the interpretation of the present,a s appearance - to be superior, or closer to the objective.

When words are reconnected to their original role as mediating between subject and object, they regain their utility.
Nihilists, - desperate degenerates - to the reverse, they disconnect and then hide their ruse in word-juggling, i.e., obscurantism.

Proper philosophy is about this process, or motive, to bridge the cognitive distance between interpreting subject, and interpreted presence, i.e., existence - between mind and body, noumenon and phenomenon.
Nihilists use word as political tools - conducting politics, not philosophy.
For degenerates world means humanity - humanity is world....and not a part of world - Cosmos.
Ergo, symbols/words only can affect minds that can use logos - this is the range of 'power' of nihilistic degeneracy - it is parasitical, in that it uses life, humanity, as a proxy to engage reality.

A virus, or a parasite, hides within another organism - a host - because it cannot survive in the open. Its mode of survival necessitates a mediating organism.
This is the role of symbols/words - semiotics - in nihilism. Means of exploiting and manipulating humanity...renaming it world.
This si why world is described in ways that imply a universal conciousness, a universal life - God.
This is Top<>Down emoting, pretending to be rational thinking; this is herd psychology in practice.
A survival strategy seeking sheltering within quantities of uniformity.


Ergo, when the words 'free' and 'will' are properly defined - i.e., not arbitrarily but by reconnecting them to experiences, empirical, reality; using world as a limiting standard restricting (disciplining) human imagination - then both concepts are illuminated, clarified, instead of obscured within esoteric contrivances.

Both are not absolutes....nor do they refer to this human contrivance.
Therefore, freedom is not absolute liberty; absolute -non-contingency.
Freedom is expressed by choice. Choice evolved to adapt the organism to fluctuating circumstances.
The quantity and quality of choices available to the organism represent the degree of this 'freedom', within the circumstances confronting it.
'Similarly, 'will' is not divine will, nor a secularized absolute will referring to absolute order - these linguistic mind games will only effect imbeciles and desperate degenerates who have ulterior motives.
Will refers to an organism's focus of its aggregate energies, i.e., patterns that participate in its becoming - organism. The degree to which an organism can control and directs its own energies determines its will-power, the power of its will - its focus. (see martial arts)
Simpler organisms - i.e., plants - have minimal ability to contradict their DNA and/or automated reactions to stimuli - they have minimal freedom when compared to 'higher' organisms - i.e., mammals - which have more sophisticated nervous systems (brain included) and can, in real time, divert or sublimate their own genetic programming, in response to stimuli, i.e., interactivity, Flux - existence.

Man is the only known organism that can cultivate - nurture - reactions that go as far as contradict their own genetic memories(DNA) - their own automated reactions; they are the only known life-form that can become Nihilistic - if we properly define and understand what [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is.
Only mankind can ideologically contradict its own nature; attempting to nurture out of itself - social engineering, eugenics...which is only a form of severe psychosis based on compartmentalization, i.e., schizophrenia - mind/body dissonance.

Past (nature) is fixed - made immutable - in the present, which is ongoing and fluid.
The contrast is that of god to man - subject relative to absolute order.
But chaos is participating in existence - in the present. It is incorporated within presence, and only hidden by man's interpretation as appearance.
Because life is organization, ordering, order is all the mind can perceive and construct, therefore appearance is an abstract order incorporating chaos/order interactions, i.e., presence is organized as appearance, chaos/order fluctuations/interactions absorbed into the organism's interpretations, giving the impression that all is ordered.
Appearance is past solidified as immutable order - mind conceives presence after-the-fact. it is always looking back - precedence - and projecting forward - ideology; it cannot perceive presence directly; cannot be conscious of being in the present.

If we hold in our mind the essence of chaos - randomness an not complexity, alluding to universal order, i.e.. one-god - then it becomes clear that chaotic energies cannot synthesize into form that can become perceived - chaos works on the quantum level, but life can only perceive a Newtonian world - establishing laws that govern order.
Chaos is, by definition, lawlessness.
It is what permits life a degree of freedom.
Abrahamism uses the allegory of Adam and Eve's contradiction of God's will - falling down, upon existence, represents this perpetual falling-away.
The Abrahamic God is a literal representation of past; in its paradigm Satan is used to represent chaos, or the present/presence - calling it illusory, or the trickster, the 'liar', exposing their motives.

Abstractions are simplifications/generalizations of the perceived apparent. A reduction of stimuli using the criteria of what can be processed and incorporated into mental models, i.e., ideas, concepts, images.
Chaotic energies cannot be processed - they cannot be perceived at all - so it is eliminated altogether, leaving only patterns to be incorporated.
We can only perceive chaos indirectly, through its affect on order - how patterned are influenced by non-patterned energies. We interpret them as unpredictable change - unprecedented events that cannot be sued to predict - project - future events.  
If all were ordered - accounting for human ignorance - all would follow a predictable continuously repeating sequence of events, with predictable outcomes - and although cycles are part of pagan spirituality, they do not imply a perfect repeating of events. History repeats, but never in exactly the same way.The slight modification is due to chaos.
But man can only perceive order - he is comforted by order, implying that his need/suffering has a reason that may not be known but that can be known. He only chooses to perceive similarities, comforted by the implication of a uniform absolute whole, where divergence is an illusion, or part of a greater uniformity, i.e., complexity.
Another way of saying god is mystifying, mysterious.
Man can justify anything using this method - every self-comforting absurdity can be validated by using obscurantism and esoteric mystifications. It is a non-explanatory explanation, simply gratifying a need man desperately wants to fulfil. Such methods pretend to be saying something profound when they are nonsense, saying nothing at all.
Like abstract Modern fArt....the observer projects meaning in the meaninglessness - his own subjective projections become a universal truth.

The use of 're-will' to produce eternal shame/guilt is part of the Abrahamic religious traditions.
Recovering Abrahamics go from one extreme to the other - many become devout Marxist, others absolutist cynics - remaining within the Nihilistic binary paradigm.
They are secular forms of the same disease.
For example, they believe they are over Christianity, or that they've have outgrown its infantile premises, when all they've done is changed semiotics - upgraded the symbols/words associated with the exact same concepts - so from an absolute one-God they go to absolute one-order.
They replace Christian totalitarianism, with Marxism - replacing the concept of a whole world, with the concept of a whole humanity - humanity becomes world; world is humanity; adapting the rhetoric and the categories accordingly - priest, becomes party commissar; Church becomes absorbed into State; sin becomes money, Satan is Capital; sinner is capitalist; innocent becomes proletariat; paradise becomes utopia; beyond space/time is replaced by beyond the present, the perpetual immanent future; revolution replaces retribution...and on and on.
One narcotic replaces another.

Causation is not negated by free-will; it is absorbed into it.
Cause simply means past - sum of all nurturing, sum of all interactions, participating in the emergence of a present/presence.
The immutability of past, no longer exists, because to exist is to be in a state of perpetual dynamic flux - interactivity.

Past manifests as presence and then falls away, leaving presence as a continuous dynamic state. This is where any degree of 'free-will' is possible.
An organisms choices participate in the causality of what has yet to become.
The degree to which it can affect its won future is the degree to which it is free - will to power.
Freedom is another way of describing power; power is another way of naming the relationship of subject with object, both known and unknown.

Since there is no absolute, there is no absolute power, i.e., omnipotence; no absolute awareness, i.e., omniscience; no absolute freedom, i.e., godliness, in the Abrahamic, Magian sense.
There is only degree, i.e., a relationship of freedom/power.