I met a man today who claimed to know everything everyone was thinking. — trogdor

The best answer you could give to him is "Ok".

This goes for objects and humans, and one self. — trogdor

I wouldn't say objects 'consciously manipulate'.

How does one go about leaving this rabbit hole? Like i have a normal life but this is nagging on me. — trogdor

I'm not sure what exactly is nagging you.

I wouldn't say objects 'consciously manipulate'. — TheMadMan

I mean, if you move a rock. That is manipulation of the object. If someone forces you to move the rock, that's also that (causality right?). Maybe i'm using the word manipulation wrong.

I'm not sure what exactly is nagging you. — TheMadMan

Just that there is something here that i feel is true but i can't put my finger on what it is.

I mean, if you move a rock. That is manipulation of the object. If someone forces you to move the rock, that's also that (causality right?). Maybe i'm using the word manipulation wrong. — trogdor

Simply put, a subject can consciously manipulate an object.
An object cannot consciously manipulate anything.
The key word in this case is 'consciously' not 'manipulation'.

Just that there is something here that i feel is true but i can't put my finger on what it is. — trogdor

An advise for when you are struggling with a problem:
Stop trying to arrive at an answer and step back and work on formulating the question better. Even formulate many questions of the same problem from different perspectives.

I met a man today who claimed to know everything everyone was thinking. — trogdor

It’s interesting that you didn’t add that he knew WHY they were thinking what they were thinking, which is much more important. For instance, perhaps he could hear their thoughts broadcast to him. That would not solve the issue of interpreting motivation or sense, and it would not by itself allow him to empathize with their perspective.
We can turn this around and posit a man who couldn’t hear people’s thoughts , but when they deliberately communicated with him, he always know why they were thinking what they were thinking, such that he was able to always see things sympathetically from their point of view. Some are better at this than others, and this skill is much more valuable than simply being able to hear people’s thoughts.

We can turn this around and posit a man who couldn’t hear people’s thoughts , but when they deliberately communicated with him, he always know why they were thinking what they were thinking, such that he was able to always see things sympathetically from their point of view. Some are better at this than others, and this skill is much more valuable than simply being able to hear people’s thoughts. — Joshs

Yeah this is probably it.

WHY they were thinking what they were thinking — Joshs

He probably ment that he could understand everyone on some animal level, it was a wierd dynamic and he was very macho.

Sorry for badly structured question. Feel free to philosophize freely. :smile:

There is no clear puzzle or question or argument in your OP. It's all over the place.

You have free will. That's in the bank. What's not in the bank is precisely what free will's ingredients are.

Philosophers often employ cases involving manipulation in order to try and gain insight into what free will's ingredients are.

So, for instance, some argue that there is no relevant difference between being subject to covert manipulation and being subject to deterministic causation. And as a person who is subject to covert manipulation is not morally responsible for the behaviour they were manipulated into doing, then covert manipulation - provided it is pervasive enough - annuls responsibility-grounding free will. And thus they conclude that determinism does too. It's a bad argument, I think, but I am just mentioning it to show that the real issue is over what free will ingredients are.

There is no clear puzzle or question or argument in your OP. It's all over the place. — Bartricks

That kind of the point. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this.



I agree the argument that it takes away responsibility is a bad one. One of the aspects of what I was thinking was given that argument psychopaths would possess more free will. But I just realized that that is very much just a stereotype from my side. But to square that with bosses possesing pyscopathic traits might be interesting. Because they have more money and power right?

Why would psychopaths possess more free will?

Let's say the options I am considering are A and B, one of which is morally right and the other wrong. I have free will over which one I go for. I care to do the right thing, so the fact one of them is wrong counts against it. I am able to do it, but I am probably not going to.

Someone else is considering A and B. They too recognize that B is wrong. But they don't care that it's wrong.

Clearly, however, they have the same free will I do. Their choice is no more or less free than mine just because they do not happen to care about doing the right thing. We have the same abilities and we are both the ultimate sources of what we do.

Their choice is no more or less free than mine just because they do not happen to care about doing the right thing. — Bartricks

Yes, that is the liberalistic argument. And I support it.
But surely also something else must be responsible for this hypothetical bad dooers bad deeds. Be it culture, circumstance, brain chemistry etc.? In my experience talking to these type of, let's be fair, men. They just don't seem to care.

Or if you mean the psychopathy? Well, like if you don't empathise with anyone I guess you are not influenced by them? But for me that's impossible. Just food for thought, and it actually circles back nicely to bosses possessing psychopathic traits i think :grin:

Yes, that is the liberalistic argument. And I support it. — trogdor

I don't know what you mean by a 'liberalistic argument'. The point is that there is no reason to think that the psychopath has more free will than I do, or anyone else, other things being equal. You said otherwise. So you have agreed that the psychopath and I have the same free will, yet you previously said that the psychopath enjoyed more free will. I wanted to know why you thought that.

But again, you seem to be all over the place. The title is free will and manipulation. Now, what are you saying? What is your thesis? Let's not wander into a discussion of what makes a person a psychopath or not, or whether it has anything todo with empathy. Focus. What's your 'free will and manipulation' related thesis?

Yes! I've been trying for a while now to create a short comprehensive thesis, but I have a hard time finding the right one or I sound like a 15 year old who just read Nietzsche. I will try again tomorrow.

Free will exists for you if you are consciously manipulative. — trogdor

That's just what they want you to think.

How does one go about leaving this rabbit hole? Like i have a normal life but this is nagging on me. — trogdor

My commiserations on your normal life. You might find some relief from the self-nagging here. It begins Thus: --

FREEDOM FROM THE SELF, and therefore the search of reality, the discovery and the coming into being of reality, is the true function of man. Religions play with it in their rituals and rigmarole – you know, the whole business of it. But if one becomes aware of this whole process, then there is a possibility for the newly awakened intelligence to function. In that, there is not self-release, not self-fulfilment, but creativeness. It is this creativeness of reality, which is not of time, that sets one free from all the business of the collective and the individual. Then one is really in a position to help create the new.
Krishnamurti in Ojai 1949, Talk 7

OP said " there is something here that i feel is true but i can't put my finger on what it is."

It seems that it is his desire to possess 'the true' and 'put his finger on it' that creates the nagging and irritation.

Good job quoting Krishnamurti, that will make things clearer for OP (sarcasm)

I met a man today who claimed to know everything everyone was thinking. — trogdor

We all have base desires. Fears. Etcetera. "Common sense" some tote. A normal person with a normal brain can perhaps indeed be described as "predictable" assuming the variables of one's environment or the scenario are known. Thing is, they seldom are as things are not always what they seem.

Maybe this man is in fact a scholar or champion of understanding the human condition. Many successful advertisers/marketers are. Maybe he's just some idiot who judges persons and things by first glance and just happened to have been lucky so far. What does it matter? By even pondering this, is this not the essence of free will?