Paul Michael

Ah, good ole B-theory and eternalism. If that’s true then we absolutely do not have any meaningful or relevant kind of free will. Something I’ve been ...

I understand. From what I’ve gathered in my time researching free will, the ability to do otherwise would allow an agent to either do or refrain from ...

Interesting perspective, I never thought about it like this before. What do you think of the following argument against the ability to do otherwise? S...

I guess the issue that I’m ultimately concerned with is the ability to do otherwise rather than whether or not an action is considered ‘free’ or ‘unfr...

So you’re saying that if I do an action, that action is free if it comes solely from me? I agree that it would have to come solely from me in order to...

I think you might be right about this, considering there is no ubiquitous understanding of what ‘free will’ even means. If I had to put a definition o...

I’ve always loved that quote from Schopenhauer, it makes things pretty clear. I’ve been contemplating free will and the lack thereof from a metaphysic...

Necessitarianism is stronger than determinism because determinism allows for the possibility that the causal chain as a whole could have been differen...

If one takes libertarian (or even certain versions of compatibilist) free will to mean that one could have done otherwise, then necessitarianism being...

I agree. Contingentarianism suggests multiple ways reality could have been, but there is nothing in reality that implies this is the case.

Doesn’t contingentarianism suggest that there genuinely are, in some sense of the word ‘are’, ways reality could have been? It must hold this position...

Perhaps I should have gone into more detail about my view of the self. I essentially believe that the notion of a permanent, unchanging self or soul i...

Kastrup’s view does indeed essentially boil down to open individualism (the view of personal identity according to which there exists only one numeric...

Technically he says we’re the same universal consciousness or “core subjectivity” but we’re unique dissociated alters or localizations of it.

Yeah, at the end of the day you’re absolutely right. I think I just need to accept that metaphysical positions cannot really be falsified and that we ...

If presentism is true, there is no past or future that extends infinitely, there is only a changing present moment. On the other hand, if eternalism i...

Wow, I never actually made the exact connections or came to the conclusions that you did about how important one’s view of death is regarding morality...

I agree that, as far as we can tell, we are entirely physical entities, which means that I agree that there probably is no supernatural soul that leav...

I think out of sheer intellectual curiosity it can be interesting to try to determine what happens after death. Does it really serve any practical pur...

I agree with this quote completely. However, when a body dies and all of its experiential states dissolve, there are still other living bodies having ...

Sleep has always been an interesting phenomenon to me. In dreamless sleep, it always seems as though there is no perception of time, space, or even se...

Interesting observations. Your explanation definitely seems less speculative than mine. I don’t see a way to definitively prove that this is the case,...

I concur. I personally don’t think we have good reasons to attribute experience to the whole of nature, yet others disagree.

I guess they could be seen as different in the sense that the first definition is broad and the second is more of an attempt to target one’s intuition...

I don’t think there is a difference, but I was attempting to illustrate what I was referring to by the word ‘qualia’. To me at least, being aware just...

Just out of curiosity, how would you describe the “what-it’s-likeness” of being alive without referring to ‘experience’?

Kastrup argues that all lifeforms are actually “dissociated alters” of the one universal consciousness, analogous to dissociative identity disorder, a...

I see what you mean now. People who reject physicalism and, for example, adopt monistic idealism (á la Bernardo Kastrup) claim that consciousness/expe...

I agree. Yes, we all have experience, though our experiences are all unique. I actually used the word ‘qualia’ in an attempt to simplify the OP, but p...

Interesting point. There’s only so far we can go with language and communication in general, but I would elaborate on the meaning of the term ‘qualia’...

But couldn’t it be the case that something existed timelessly prior to the beginning of what we perceive as time? Not sure if I’m following this. Ther...

That would be thought-determinism in a nutshell, wouldn’t it? :grin:

Interesting point, didn’t consider that. InPitzotl also helped me understand why the OP isn’t a good argument.

I can see where the argument goes off the rails, thanks for the response.

This is an interesting and good question. I’m by no means an expert in this, but I would say that there are “pure” thoughts and action-initiating thou...

I agree that our deliberate actions come from us. However, if the thought which leads me to do one action over another is itself not freely willed, ho...

Very interesting, I’m not familiar with CEMI field theory but I’m definitely going to look into it starting with the thread you linked.

Yes, right. I tend to align with Schopenhauer and Kastrup on this particular issue in that, if there actually is a transcendent force, it does not del...

In my opinion, if there legitimately is transcendent meaning for us to discover, finding it can alleviate at least some of the psychological and emoti...

I have a lot to respond to here :lol:. In thinking about this topic some more, rather than trying to reconcile physicalism with idealism and invoking ...

I see where you’re going with this — ‘physical’ is an ambiguous term. I would agree that my definition doesn’t hold since I can’t come up with a meani...

I would say anything completely described by the laws of physics

Thanks for the information, I vaguely remember coming across Hempel’s Dilemma in the past but never really analyzed it. Practically speaking, it would...

It does seem to largely be a semantic issue in many ways. And I liked the point you made about physics being compatible with a ‘mind-only’ ontology.

I don’t blame you, I realized recently that the model I proposed in the OP is fairly convoluted :lol:. If consciousness is like a radio signal and bra...

I couldn’t agree more. Monism in some form appears to be the case. When it comes to the case of monistic idealism in particular, I’m pretty much agnos...

Thanks for the welcome and kind comment! Much appreciated.

Also, I forgot to mention in my previous post that there is another school of Hindu thought called Kashmir Shaivism which is similar to Advaita in man...

These are all great questions. I would say, based off of my limited understanding of Advaita á la Rupert Spira, the first step is gaining the intellec...

Thanks for the useful information about Schopenhauer and Nietzsche considering Eastern thought, I’ll definitely look into that some more. It’s also in...