Basically my point.
explaining how meaning arises in human practices doesnt turn it into something “inherent in reality” in the strong sense. It just explains the mechanism by which meaning exists for agents like us. I am not denying meaning exists, and im not expecting custard either. Im just saying meaning isnt a property in the universe independent of minds, language, and practice.
That was all the “objective vs non-objective” distinction was trying to capture in the first place.
I do not think that widespread disagreement is very strong evidence either way. History is riddled with vies that were initially unpopular and later became the standard, and also views that went extinct because they were wrong. So disagreement alone doesnt really settle anything.
I genuinely dont treat this as a “performance” or identity thing. I am just engaging with arguments because thats what philosophical discussion is, testing whether positions hold up under criticism.
On determinism, i agree that if its true then all of this including disagreement and persausion is part of the causal process. But that does not make the process meaningless. It just describes how it works.
So i do not see anything here that changes the acutal substance of the views ive been discussing.
It removes the ability to choose beliefs, and your belief your beliefs are founded upon reason is hard determined, meaning it’s not founded upon reasons, but just upon causes. I believe in free will because I must. I don’t consider various positions and choose the best. My decision was decided before I ever was exposed to the reasons.
Doxastic voluntarism: Doxastic Voluntarism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Who needs objective meaning to have purpose? Purpose is fundamentally subjective, as intention is the property of the subject. But this does not mean that the universe has no purpose, to the contrary, the universe has a whole lot of purpose, as it has a whole lot of subjects.
I believe that the mistake here is treating “causes” and “reasons” as if theyre mutually exclusive. Uder determinism, my belief is still fromed through reasoning meaning i evaluate arguments, weigh evidence, and drwa conclusions. those mental processes are themselves part of the causal chain, but that doesnt make them any less “reasons”
Saying “my decision was caused” doesnt remove any reasoning, it describes how reasoning happens. Also, “you couldnt have believed otherwise” doesnt imply " you didnt arrive at your belief through reasons." it only says that the process, includin which reasons i was exposed to and how i processed them, had prior causes buddy.
“Being caused to believe something doesn’t remove reasoning; it explains how reasoning produces belief.”
Classic category error / composition fallacy.
Subjective purposes existing within the universe does not imply that the universe itself has an objective purpose.
That’s not what I said. I said the universe has subjective purpose. But I ask why are you looking for objective purpose when you know that purpose is subjective. That makes no sense. Lack of “objective purpose” does not mean lack of purpose, when you know that purpose is subjective.
You are trying to shift from ontology to semantics. If you define purpose as subjective by definition, then ‘objective purpose’ is ruled out linguistically, not philosophically though.
Well, then there is objective purpose, and you’re wrong. Subjects are part of the universe, which is the object, so the purpose which is within subjects is also within the object, and is therefore objective.
This is ridiculous.
Being inside the universe makes something real, not objective in the sense of mind-independent purpose.
Yes subjects and their mental states exist within the universe in a physical sense. But that doesnt make the contents of those mental states “objective” in the relevant sense of being independent of subjects. Otherwise everything that happens in minds, dreams, illusions, imagined purposes would automaticall become objective simply because our brains are physical objects inside of the universe. That seems to remove the distinction entirely. So i dont think locating subjective purposes inside the unverse turns them into objective purposes it just means they are real psychological states occuring within physical systems.
Now it’s you who is making this into a linguistical issue, thereby producing a category mistake. “Objective” does not mean “independent of subjects”. You are simply defining it that way for the sake of saying there is no “objective purpose”.
But of course, we just went through that, “purpose” is known and understood as the property of subjects, as I explained. So you are just making that category mistake of thinking that there could be purpose independent from subjects, then claiming that this is impossible. We just went through that, and it has no bearing on whether purpose, as the property of subjects, is real or not.
Since you profess determinism, I suggest that you insist that there is no such thing as subjective purpose, and there is no purpose whatsoever. That is consistent with determinism.
Not true. It is definitively established, which is why ‘you get it all the time’. But of course you’re free to rationalise it or explain it away, which you will do.
There’s another front being opened in the ‘values and purpose’ argument — from biology. A large part of the appeal of mechanistic materialism and determinism is based on the physicalist idea of the so-called blind forces that supposedly govern physical interactions. That there’s no evidence of purpose or intentionality on the level of atomic interactions.
But this is nowadays being questioned in biology. There is an abundance of evidence that organisms are purposive from the get-go. Of course this doesn’t mean conscious intention, but the ability to seek goals and solve problems in pursuit of survival. The word ‘teleonomy’ was coined to replace the ‘teleology’ (goal-directedness) of Aristotle’s philosophy. Teleonomy is said to be the apparent goal-directedness of organisms, distinct from Aristotle’s much broader term which encompassed the inorganic realm (e.g. stones and fires displaying goal-directed behaviours) . But regardless, purpose is purposeful, conscious or not, and living organisms displayed it from their inception. There’s an MIT open source book on the topic Evolution “On Purpose” - Teleonomy in Living Systems.
A snippet:
(Biological) Development is incredibly reliable, producing bodies to very tight tolerances despite considerable deviations and noise at the level of gene expression and cellular activity (Eritano et al., 2020; Gonze et al., 2018; Simon, Hadjantonakis, & Schroter, 2018). This robustness, and its occasional failure in the case of birth defects, immediately suggests teleonomic perspectives, because only goal-directed agents can make mistakes. Biophysics alone cannot make mistakes; every micro-scale process proceeds according to the laws of physics and chemistry. Developmental defects are mistakes relative to the correct outcome toward which they strive (Matthewson & Griffiths, 2017).
Compatibilism is much more consistent with both physics and subjective experience than “hard determinism” (or indeterminism).
“Full nihilism” includes itself, to wit: if nothing matters (or everything is meaningless), then the statement “nothing matters (or everything is meaningless)” also does not matter (or is meaningless); ergo, “full nihilism” is self-refuting. I prefer absurdism.
“Materialism” does not account for non-material facts (e.g. mathematical proofs) or quantum fields or subjective experience, therefore it is not fundamental (i.e. a monism). I prefer naturalism.
The deliberative process may have occurred prior to the decision, but you were not provided an array of choices and you selected the best of them. You selected the one you had to. Your assigning a reason for your decision, fully convinced it was, does not mean it was. You are fully hypnotized (as it were) by the forces of determinism.
My disagreement with you cannot be otherwise nor can the position you hold be otherwise.
If you sat as a judge over a criminal trial, the trial was a formality of pool balls striking one another, the conviction unalterable. The murderer incapable but to murder and you incapable but to express outrage at his decisions and to sentence him to death.
If we could figure out the algorithm, we’d forego the trial and just see how you’d rule beforehand, assuming our algorithm would allow us.
The feeling of rational confidence is just another domino.
Our world is meaningful because we are compelled to make meaning. We do not seem to like living in a pointless world. Fortunately, the range of meanings available is very wide; we can find a nice selection to suit our own [determined] needs. I want an understandable world; it doesn’t need the mysteries of deities, but it does need to be comprehendible. Materialism is a means by which the world can be understood. (the tools of history, science, the arts, math, philosophy, etc.).
Nihilism doesn’t appeal to me, even though I agree that the world doesn’t deliver objective meaning. The universe is a swirling mess of energy and matter which will presumably twist and twirl until it is exhausted some trillions of years in the future. Purpose is another of our specialties. We will find a purpose for everything under the sun. Intrinsic value is another thing we need. I think existence is valuable in and of itself for me, for you, for maple trees, for birds, for fish, for everything. Some will find intrinsic value here, others there. Some don’t like it, I suppose.
I’ll be 80 years old in a few months. When I was a younger man, I really liked arguing theory. It isn’t that I don’t care about important things – but fewer things seem as important as they once seemed.
I consider your thread a success. It has generated 54 responses in a reasonably short period of time. True, not many agreed with you, but that’s OK. You probably stand unconvinced by the counterarguments presented. That’s OK too. It can take a long time to absorb counterargument to our favorite ideas.
Science has in fact shown that, at the micro level, the world is indeterministic — there was a Nobel Prize for this a few years ago.
The existence of consciousness cannot be derived from the emergence of matter. Let us assume that in complex systems a new quality can arise — emergence. But this still does not clarify the essence of consciousness or why it arises at all. By the same logic, one could explain anything through emergence, thereby legitimizing everything immaterial.
You have not explained how, in practice, you use materialism to explain human behavior without relying on the magical concept of emergence.
Of course, there is no point in trying to convert you to my faith. It is enough to show that your beliefs are not cast in concrete and to give a few examples. Faith may be enough for you to reconcile yourself with them; for others, it is not enough, and that is why they look for other answers.
A good challenge. Let’s dance a little.
I believe your triad of beliefs, assembled into a single system, contains several philosophical holes.
Hard determinism + Complete nihilism + Materialism—that’s absolutely irrefutable, bulletproof, and totally dogmatic armor. It’s constructed exactly like the medieval theology it supposedly transcends.
The first sign of dogmatism is total irrefutability (I suggest you read Popper). Look: if I present any logical argument now, the determinist will respond, “You said that not because it’s true, but because the neurons in your brain were predetermined to fire that way since the Big Bang” (or something similar). Any argument against determinism within determinism is declared an illusion. Thus, your position is unshakable from within, but therein lies its main trap: how does it differ from all other dogmatisms?
Similarly, with nihilism: start arguing with you and arguing your position in any way—you can always say something like, “We’re just random mold and none of this means anything.”
All three approaches seem like a kind of “mind cleansing” and an impartial view of the laws of the Universe. But in reality, this is more like a convenient template that ideally saves your brain energy, compared to, say, holding on to irreducibility. I’ll go further: in your dialectical urge to tie everything together and resolve all irreducibility to one position or another, you contradict yourself with that same nihilism.
Materialism tells us about building blocks—atoms—and they collide. But… tell me a constant of matter that remains solid within a different network of implication? Tell me what matter is, ultimately? Aren’t you basing your logic and arguments on a frozen, imaginary snapshot from 150 years ago?
Therefore, I consider such a triad a soft and cowardly position. It pretends to be tough, but there’s no elasticity in it because it doesn’t allow conflict to enter.
I cannot be strawmanning you because you didn’t lay out any description of your position. My post was couched in terms of common responses to the positions you listed.
You didn’t make an argument. You listed a set of terms and I listed common objections to them as they are normally defined.
Re materialism:
It’s true that “physicalism” is an extremely diverse label. In general, “materialism” has tended to exclude process-metaphysics historically. Hardly anyone uses “materialism” anymore precisely because of its connections to atomism and related systems.
The problem with physicalism is that it is so vague. You might be interested in “Hemple’s Dilemma” on this issue.
Re epiphenomenalism:
The response to the issues of epiphenomenalism doesn’t really answer the question as far as I can see. There is a difference between the thesis that every contingent being has causes (which is widely accepted throughout the history of philosophy, including by most advocates of “libertarian” free will) and hard determinism. To swap between these two senses of “determined” is a fallacy of equivocation. “Hard determinism” is a particular thesis about the metaphysics and nature of causality. Hard determinism says you can explain causality wholly in terms of prior occurances and the laws of physics. That is either a reductionist thesis, or else it uses “physics” and “laws” in a extremely broad way (e.g., as its original meaning of “being qua changing”) and not as denoting what is studied by modern physics. In the latter sense, it ceases to have many of the consequences associated with hard determinism as usually formulated, so it’s unclear why we should call it the same thing.
Kim’s objection is basically that if you can completely describe everything an organism does causally from physics, then appeals to thoughts, to biology, etc. are duplicative. With weak emergence, the description involving thoughts and biology are just a short hand for the more detailed physical description. Per Ockham’s Razor, it doesn’t make sense to posit multiple overlapping causes for the same event that are describing the same exact thing.
Of course, if there is “strong emergence” then this issue doesn’t obtain. But aside from all the criticisms of strong emergence, it would follow from it that agents could simply be irreducible causal wholes. If agents are irreducible causal wholes, necessary for explanation and prediction, hard determinism would seem to be false (unless we radically redefine what is normally meant by physics, and default on it being necessarily law-like). That’s the issue.
Kim is up front that his arguments don’t necessarily hold for process metaphysics. But process metaphysics doesn’t have the same issues with emergence, and so it also opens the door to agents are primary causal wholes as well.
How do you define free will? How do you decide using your brain?
Are you able to say what physical thing or force in the universe determines your actions?