|
|
I have said this to hundreds of people, to most of whom it
stayed meaningless. Determinism, a fatalistic philosophy contrived as an
argument against a particular (seemingly on-purpose) misinterpretation of
"Free Will", starts out with it and heads off in a direction of denial by
the usage of
1encapsulated
logic. Like Determinism, science starts out with the particle components
of atoms in a materialistic view of existence, but (unlike Determinism)
requires verification and the ability of duplication to make its own
pronouncements about The World. As it gets presented by its proponents,
Determinism seems inherent to the Buddhist religion, is not observable,
verifiable or falsifiable, does not meet several
principles of atheism, and
so must be recognized as a religious –not scientific– interpretation of a
worldview, and as a religious response to a misconstrued statement made in
Christianity.
Why is it not science? Mainly because of massive lack of
evidence and verification; and mainly because, as is true of any religion,
what evidence and verification its proponents claim for support must be
interpreted according to a pre-constructed philosophy rather than allowing
them to lead to conclusions of their own. While Determinism is an
overstatement of a twisted view of the obvious, science makes a statement
about discovery. The hundreds of people to whom I have written or told this
have no way to visualize it. Determinists would say, "They were
predetermined to be that way. That is not their fault at all, but is a fault
of our process of learning, the fact of our state of knowledge being less
than incomplete, and the failures all result from that." So? That shucks
them of responsibility for their own self-development?
That is, my failure to express it results from the same
fractured understanding I share with all those whose interest I piqued long
enough to get them to listen to or read my words. So, even though I have
already said this to hundreds of people with a completely foreseeable
inherent failure to their understanding, let me say it once again to you.
Maybe, although the possibility is so slight it would yield a negative
result (which is entirely probable), you will be the one who breaks the
mold.
The World As I See It starts out with a view very similar to
that of the Determinists: "All that exists does so as a result of an
accretive sequence of events and processes." Let me specify this: "Nature is
the result of an accretive sequence of ongoing events and processes." That
is the easy part. All I have to do now is explain it. To do that, let me
reword it this way: "Events and processes, in a process of growth, generated
the entirety of Nature." That, too, seems obvious, but dangerously so?
Let’s begin by defining each element of that sentence. We all
believe ourselves to know how to recognize an event. An event is something
that happens during the passage of time (and time, we can see, is what
passes to (for one thing) separate the beginning of any occurrence from its
ending). Any single thing to occur, then, is an event. So, that being
obvious, what does it have to do with processes?
A process, according to my dictionary, is any series of
actions or occurrences that bring about a result. In other words, a process
is a series of events that can, in itself, be recognized. A process also can
describe a mixing together of ingredients, also to bring about a result.
Those ingredients can be events and processes. In other words, a process can
be a sequential or parallel series of events. It can also be both together,
if that is what will bring about a result.
The occurrence of the process is, in itself, an event.
Furthermore, a sequence of simultaneously occurring processes, in itself,
can obviously contribute to the occurrence of a further event. Existence is
such a magnificent process, accreted into existence as the result of an
elaborate hierarchy of processes, all of which can be defined by the
processes that resulted from their own lesser hierarchies of events and
processes. All to exist can be accurately described this way, without
exception.
Accretion is a word that informs us the universe resulted
from growth rather than creation, and that the process of accretion is
ongoing and continuous. Nature, expressed as a proper noun, is the name of
the result. That we can infer a describable end to this process, and also
describe a speculative beginning to it (link
to more information), neither of which necessitate anything
more than time for accretionary evolution to work itself out, we need infer
no Creative Master without substantial reason to do so (other than allowing
ourselves to be bullied into it).
But, does this not affirm Determinism at its roots?
The answer is ‘no’. Because its main aim is the utilization
of this knowledge to give substance to its denial of a misconstrued version
of Free Will, determinism fails to recognize our place in the evolutionary
chain. Free Will can be shown to be a logical hoax without making
determinism’s past-oriented claims that we are "controlled" by the
substances from which we are made, while never offering to show in any
definitive manner exactly how that control gets imposed, and by what or by
whom. All that is needed is simple logic and the realization that, according
to what this document has presented to you, we all are processes, are part
of a larger ongoing process to which we contribute, or from which we steal,
building a future with materials from the past.
By insisting that only its detractive view of existence is
correct, Determinists deny there can be an affirmative view. In the
detractive view, Nature is seen as cold, dead rocks circling hot stars
because that is the ultimate end of all planets. Because of its warm, damp
atmosphere, Earth suffers from a disease caused by life-forms which have
invaded it and contaminated its rocky crust with their detritus, and
sickened it with infusions of chemicals that only their existence could have
introduced. Humans, who expose those putrid contaminants to further
processing, have to be the worst kind of parasite. Determinists, of course,
will never acknowledge that, but such are the logical inferences that result
from following their philosophy to its extremes.
Taking a logical approach to the subject of Free Will does
not require the negation of our entire range of choice-making from out of
whatever options we may attain to. We do have options of all kinds all
through our lives, that we test on an ongoing basis. We will select from
them, knowing that our selections may prevent us from attaining to any
alternatives in any particular option set, and that making a selection will
send us down a road upon which certain new options will get presented to us
and others will be avoided, but the fact that we know most of that ahead of
time must make it too obvious to cause us to insist we never have any
choices whatsoever.
We can more correctly serve our humanity without enduring the
fatalism inherent to Determinism, by not looking at our experiential and
genetic makeup as limitations, but as qualifications instead. We don’t
choose from a set of options because "that is all we have", but we do it
because we can. We don’t choose a certain subject to study because we are
forced to by our culture and our DNA, but because our culture and DNA have
aroused excitement about it within us, and we sought it out whether or not
our circumstances made it immediately available. That the form of our
material bodies and the lack of wings prevents us from choosing to fly did
not prevent us from learning how to build gliders and airplanes. Our lack of
awareness keeps us from being and doing far more than genetics and culture
ever could.
The final word to define in the sentence I have offered for
your consideration is ‘Nature’. I stated at the outset that Nature is a
proper noun, the name of the process that results from all the rest of them.
Let’s assure our understanding: Nature is not a ‘thing’ but a result. It is
a result of compounding all the ‘things’ which are the results of lesser
processes within the hierarchy from which it occurred.
The nature of Nature is a result of a pattern set eons ago
when Nature was much smaller, even back in time when only strings were
present in the Universe. It is that pattern which gets repeated throughout
Nature on an increasing scale however we perceive it, wherever we may look.
Deviations from that pattern lead Determinists to say there is no truth,
when a practical view would simply acknowledge anomalies will present
themselves at times, and must be accounted for in the overall picture.
Nature being the name of the overall process and the result of all that has
gone before, all those lesser processes will reinforce the nature of Nature
within themselves and define the way things work. Nature was not designed
from the top down, but from the bottom onward.
Determinism insists that imposes controls and limits on the
way things will be and the way human beings respond to what they perceive to
be ‘choices’. Let us insist upon negation of that negative view of our
existence, and propose instead that it offers up the options from which we
will choose, and presents us with the opportunities to make wise choices and
mistakes from which to learn. Will we affirm ourselves as independent human
beings?— or allow ourselves to become enslaved by a fatalism that mainly
perpetuates all the ill philosophies and beliefs to which human beings have
fallen and become enslaved in the past?
Determinists will use a misconception about the way our
nervous systems function in an effort to 'prove' their claim that we do not
make conscious choices. In their statement of that claim, they refer to an
observation about brain scans that shows how we are only aware of pain
after we have responded to it. A hand on a hot stove is a typical
example: The hand is withdrawn, and only then the scan shows brain activity.
A proper understanding of the way things work shows us that
proves nothing, and that the demonstration is irrelevant. All the impulses
from touch receptors travel up the spinal cord to the brain. If a signal is
received at the spinal cord that signifies danger, a signal is sent directly
back to that part of the body to induce a reflex action. Consciousness is
only alerted as a part of that process, to inform us why a reflex action
occurred. A choice still remains to us, as to whether to rely on the
correctness of the information that induced the reflex, or to test for
verification. Choice does not get eliminated simply because a primitive
portion of our nervous system has already acted. Moreover, that primitive
portion of any individual's nervous system has to be recognized as a
definite part of 'I', an individual separate and distinct from others in any
grouping, whose choices remain his or hers in spite of whatever may have led
up to them. Knowing that the nervous system has been set up to pass
information on about an event after it has occurred, in itself, shows that
consciousness is recognized as factual by Nature, even if human beings
cannot agree on that.
This is the world as I see it. We have inherited a rootless
presence upon this world, and recognize that perfect freedom would result
only from our nonexistence, wherein we would not suffer the limitations our
material presence here imposes. Our very rootlessness allows us the ability
to wander about and involve ourselves in the wonderful process of discovery
from which science has resulted. Mistakes made while enjoying that process
have contributed to our body of knowledge as much as have the wonderful
truths we have exposed, and about which our knowledge accretes as it evolves
into a finer and closer ‘fit’ with our world, while we find pleasure and
avoidance of hardship in the results. We can finally foresee ourselves as
not a disease, but in our role as caretakers in the nurturance of our world
(a role a huge portion of us bend over backwards to deny), while we struggle
to find ways to shed ourselves of parasitic viral memes which we inherited
from our errant past, and do so in a way that does not cause us to destroy
ourselves. Determinism does not open doors, it closes them.
This is the world as I see it. We live upon the surface of
the only planet to our knowledge that contains life, and it exists in a sea
of dead planet bodies. We are not a disease unless we allow ourselves to be
forced into that role by the memes that
occupy our nervous systems, and that induce in us a form
of deadly symbiosis with themselves wherein we–and they–will eventually
become destroyed. If we are controlled by culture, these are the
tools of that control. They will lose their effect on us only in accordance
with our ability to recognize them and innoculate ourselves against their
effect by learning to understand them.
I have written a book with that purpose in mind. Many things
I say in it will seem strange until you can understand them well enough on
your own to be able to form the connections I made and presented to you.
Read and study
The Complete Universe of Memes with that in mind.
My other books:
click here.
Back to Page
One
Back to Page
Two
Onward to Page
Four
————————————
Footnotes:
1:
Self-referencing Return
|
![[Visit Dancing Girls]](../images/DMdancers_010_160x200[1].gif) |
