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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/21/16 in all areas

  1. The fact is, we experience will as a causative act specifically from our view of it. This does not mean that some mental weather prediction machine could not say while watching our neural storms and currents that "he will decide x" an instant before we take outward action. Causation that the machine sees would be utterly incomprehensible to us... subtle patterns of unfathomable complexity changing ceaselessly and faster than the blink of an eye. Causation we experience might be "this qualifies as that which implies p so I decide x". Is this some kind of dichotomy? Is it problematic that we have the unique point of view to allow us to see causality happen from an intelligible framework rather than a hopelessly complex one? Electrons and nuclei of atoms are fundamental to low and high pressure systems but we don't need to dismiss the idea that rain is caused by low and high pressure systems(with humidity as needed). It would be a mistake to say either pressure systems or particles are the cause. Reality and causation are not schizophrenic. Your mind causes, and it is arranged such that thoughts ARE causative. We don't need to see proof in the hopelessly complex brain all we need to do is introspect and act. Atoms do not think, they make it possible for us to think.
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  2. I love these sorts of questions. I think future historians will say that human societies clung to collectivistic philosophies because they were too ignorant to properly integrate individualism with government. Why are we, as a species, still so ignorant? Perhaps we lack the psychological tools required to make individualism universally obvious, like the telescope and space travel made the solar system universally obvious to even moronic onlookers. Perhaps we gave up on enlightened monarchy too early. Perhaps we should have developed individualism more before designing a new rights-based constitutional Republic. Perhaps we are suffering the inevitable consequences of institutionalizing even a little bit of irrationality in making rights God-given and government part-statist.
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  3. epistemologue, could you state your basic thesis in just a few sentences perhaps?
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