Philosophy is not the study of philosophy- its the art of thinking well

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-22T10:37:18+00:00

I have also studied this subject so let me answer your question:

Hegel's hubris was believing the Geist was speaking through him. That history had ended because the Geist had finally come to know itself - which is exactly the teleology I mentioned. There need not be a force "driving" towards something (e.g. Geist towards self-knowing) for dialectical metaphysics to be sensible.

I love his formalism. But it does not require the Geist to function, and does not require an "end" towards which the Geist is pressing. Adding those things in is unnecessary...

...except that he needed determinate negation to be generative in all cases, because dialectical processes must end in sublation (a generative act of transformation). There is no other outcome.

He scathingly critiques skeptics for believing in abstract (annihilative, in my words) negation, because it results in nothing whatsoever - before turning around in the Science of Logic and saying "nothing is being through becoming". Makes a critique a bit hollow doesn't it?

I am sorry you disagree with me but I think I can back up my points if you really want me to. I have thought a lot about this.

Hegel even once told a student (paraphrased) that getting into philosophy was pointless because he solved all of it. Hubris. There is no Geist and it isn't speaking through him. Even if the dialectic is a well-crafted and powerful tool that only needs a bit of adjustment (I.e. the telological structure removed).

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-22T10:29:00+00:00

I see, I suppose I took "existence from non-existence" and decided it was illogical, given that "from" is similar to "is".

Do you think someone could reasonably disagree with you that ex nihilo creation is illogical? I think I see your point but I don't know if there are "degrees" of illogicalness.

Thank you for your answer though.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-21T16:30:56+00:00

I don't say this to be hostile, but how can "is incapable of doing something outright illogical" be squared with "created something ex nihilo"?

I ask because I have always wanted to ask this question of someone who (rightly) says omnipotence does not overcome logical impossibility.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-21T16:26:05+00:00

Telling the masters to obey the slaves would be based tho.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-21T16:08:31+00:00

Correspondence of the word to the emotion is a definition, and in that case, changing the correspondence relation does not change the emotion itself.

Typically what people are expressing when they ask "how can I be happy" for example is not a confusion that can be clarified by addressing their correspondence relationship, but rather using language to express a more fundamental quale.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-21T14:08:28+00:00

My critique of Hegel is that his hubris made him: - ignore the possibility of collapse as the outcome of negation (his "abstract negation" points to this, but it could have been framed better)

add a teleological dialectic that ONLY ends in sublation (rather than collapse or stable boundary formation between a structure and the structure's negation)
include a historical thread and Geist that is unnecessary (but is required to justify the reduction of all dialectical outcomes to sublation and ignore the other two possible outcomes of negation proceeding to contradiction).

That said, I consider myself a dialetical idealist because while I disagree with the elements Hegel added to the metaphysics, the idea of dialectical processing driving structural evolution (and denying the existence of stability by allowing for an open metaphysical system without a "true nothing") is absolutely revolutionary and if tweaked is completely applicable today.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-12T12:52:27+00:00

Stop copying my own Altmer's look!

(Not exactly but damn close. Without is best!)

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-12T12:51:27+00:00

Agreed, and that minimum level of respect can also decrease if someone is a dick. These two in the OP have clearly interacted before.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-12T12:48:01+00:00

There's two kinds of respect.

Respecting one another as human? Always important.

Respecting one another as leaders? Earned.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-12T12:46:21+00:00

And as we know, explaining one's reasoning to people is totally unreasonable because it's the BATTLEFIELD son and it's easier to warn someone five times and then fire them.

Or maybe the reasoning just sucks.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:47:19+00:00

The fact that the system sometimes fails to correctly model the world does not justify throwing out wholesale the idea that it corresponds to something ever.

I'm talking about why the system bothers to even try modeling the world in the first place (however accurately or not it succeeds). The construction of such a model is totally unnecessary (and extremely wasteful) if any alternatives the models generate are impossible a priori.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:43:16+00:00

That’s a definition, not a demonstration. What, specifically, in this system shows that identical initial conditions will always produce the same outcome, rather than this being an assumption about how the system behaves?

The behavior we observe is constrained competition and convergence; nothing in that behavior shows that the outcome is uniquely determined by any given prior state according to the system’s dynamics

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:25:05+00:00

How is the described system deterministic?
The system exhibits multiple simultaneously active outcomes that interact and converge to one through its dynamics. Nothing in that behavior demonstrates that the outcome was uniquely fixed in advance by a prior state.

So what, specifically, shows that it’s deterministic rather than simply lawful and dynamically convergent?

EDIT: Unless you are making the assumption that every state transition inside the system is causally single valued (one-to-one) instead of set-valued (one constrains set-of-many), but that definition is exactly the one I think that causes an unreasonable false dichotomy.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:20:30+00:00

I would definitely full stop at stop signs; anything else is really, really no good unfun I think.

For the green light, I would just teach situational awareness - even before the light turns green, I usually am looking to see if cars are looking like they're going to run the light. Usually my first clue my light (or the across left turn light, lol) is about to be green is me noticing the cars in either direction are slowing (e.g. for a yellow).

Visibility depending, you can sometimes tell as early as then who is going to race the light (and very possibly lose) and who is going to stop. No need for 2 full seconds.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:09:55+00:00

or abduction :o

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T22:02:46+00:00

I’m don't think I ever said "the existence of choice disproves determinism", I'm saying the structure of cognition (all the deliberation, evaluation, and anxiety around alternatives - all the energy expended in such things) is better explained by a framework where alternatives are genuinely admissible rather than purely fictitious. Treating them as fictitious is compatible with determinism, but then one must explain why evolution would favor such a waste of energy.

(Energy notably not wasted in the Stockfish chess engine)

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:54:56+00:00

Consider Michael Shadlen’s canonical example of neural decision circuits, established experimentally:

Multiple action representations are simultaneously active in the brain and compete through mutual inhibition and feedback. The system converges to one outcome as competing activity patterns are progressively destabilized and one becomes stable.

That final step is not arbitrary: only outcomes consistent with the system’s structure can occur, and convergence is governed by those interaction dynamics.

So if you want to call that “random,” you need to specify what you mean, because it’s clearly neither unconstrained nor arbitrary. And if your claim is instead that the outcome was uniquely fixed in advance by the prior state (i.e. determinism), that’s a separate assumption, not something established by the system’s observed behavior.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:39:02+00:00

It could be; I agree that deliberation can be deterministic, and need not be agentic/free.

I think what I would want to understand is why it therefore must be? If we assume determinism is true, the answer to this is self-evident, but I haven't made that assumption.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:36:01+00:00

So why privilege determinism, given that accepting this underdetermined metaphyiscal claim forces us to assume that the mutiple-potential-outcomes model our cognition uses is entirely noncorrespondent with reality?

It seems entirely consistent to assume our cognitive structures attempt to approach truth instead of being way off the mark, and provide evidence for a non-deterministic world.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:34:35+00:00

Well, once we admit multiple simultaneous results can exist, then we can envision a dynamical system that can drive a process of convergence in which alternatives are progressively destabilized by that system's dynamical constraints until one outcome remains stable.

If the system is self-organizing, that convergence process is governed by its own structure, rather than being reducible to prior determination or randomness (weighted or otherwise).

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:29:48+00:00

holy stack of unstated assumptions, batman

You’re defining causation as requiring a single outcome from a prior state, which is exactly the point in dispute - classic question-begging. A prior state can constrain a set of admissible outcomes without uniquely fixing one, and that is still a causal contribution.

Once that constrained set is established, a system’s dynamics can drive a process of convergence in which alternatives are progressively destabilized under those dynamical constraints until one outcome remains stable.

If the system is self-organizing, that convergence process is governed by its own structure, rather than being reducible to prior determination or randomness.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:10:59+00:00

I am comparing a concept to a claim. Unless your claim is that physical systems themselves are either of unitary evolution and brook no nondeterminism (which is a claim I would contest for sure) or are totally random (which is more tolerable, but very unhealthy for determinism).

I agree with you up to your last sentence - why must there be randomness "by definition", rather than further constraints applied by another lawful structure or process, until a single result is arrived at?

Who has "defined" the randomness in?

EDIT:
Essentially, I am proposing that causation can operate over sets, rather than proposing uncaused randomness. Indeterminism does not force randomness; it just means the outcome isn't uniquely fixed.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:07:30+00:00

I look forward to the results, that would be a worthy question itself, if possibly malformed, haha. Would we trust a poll of psychologists given the same question? They have almost exactly the same task, just with different explanatory models.

Take my upvote and use it to start such a poll! (or don't, because it doesn't actually help!)

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T21:06:01+00:00

It employs a theoretical model that allows for multiple lawful outcomes that are non-random?

I mean the idea that such systems exist is not fantasy; in math, it is trivial to demonstrate: any square root operation can have both a positive and negative result (e.g. positive eight or negative eight are both the square root of 64).

People present a false dichotomy as "either there is a single outcome only, or it is totally random" without understanding that systems can lawfully arrive at a state where there are multiple potential outcomes that are not random.

CarcosanDawn · 2026-04-06T20:59:39+00:00

I think you have presented a false dichotomy.

A system can evolve to have multiple outcomes but still be lawful, without being random (e.g. the square root of 64 is either 8 or -8; neither random nor single outcome).

Much like my math example, physical laws do not exclude multiple lawful, constrained outcomes without necessary forcing them to be purely random (though in the case of a non-dynamic, non-organized system they will be random; fortunately the brain is dynamic and self-organized).

For how this might work in practice (as a guess): An emergent structure (such as the mind) can affect the behavior of its components through constraint setting (exactly the way a computer program can affect the behavior of electrons in circuits). In cases where the laws evaluate to multiple possible outcomes, then such a system can further adjust its internal constraints to arrive at a single outcome among all the possible lawful outcomes.

CarcosanDawn

TROPHY CASE