I cannot handle these interactions. I am also deleting my social media accounts, discord, etc. it is too distressing psychologically

@Baden can you please pm so I can delete my account

wow

Why would you bring kids into the world to condemn them to wage slavery and climate change. seems rather sadistic

Okay, so how does the mental trajectory which you admitted is constrained change course? Does one part of the mind act upon another? Isn't this just the homunculus argument? And if one part of the mind acts on another to changes the trajectory, wouldn't the "acting" part also be constrained by these pro generative conditions? It sounds like you are just quibbling with the word determined because of the implications it has for your position, but the space that you have to put this "willing mechanism" seems to be non-existent in my view.

I am wondering why we still treat humans as causal agents with rewards and punishments that are functions of that supposed agency when reality is so obviously determined

My point was the mentioning your occupation was irrelevant to the idea you were putting forward. In my opinion, the only reason you mentioned it is because you take great pride in the fact that you are an engineer, and not part of the unwashed masses.

I had attempted to portray class as not part of identity politics, as identitarians would interpret it. I understand that properly you can say class is part of identity, but modern identitarians typically castigate class discussions as missing the point, although I do appreciate your overall sentiment. Go into a left space and tell them they need to emphasize class over identity politics, and you will learn very quickly what I am describing.

In theories of white privilege, to provide a more academic example, all classes of white people are said to benefit from white privilege. Therefore, class becomes, non-consequential to the identity.

S accused you of trolling because you are avoiding the actual points people raise, and you are just repeating the same things

If change is impossible, you cannot add any elements to A.

You have not demonstrated it is impossible as I pointed out.

Well, I think that like subjectivity, introspection can be considered a filter through which you experience the world, which are by definition, experienced through the lens of your life, emotions, upbringing, what you've read etc. Objectivity is arguably impossible, although the scientific method does attempt to account for our subjective biases and distortions.

I do not think there is a relationship between knowledge being important and engineering as an occupation. I think engineering has financial incentives, but knowledge is acquired through many different occupations, none of them being superior to the other, as can be seen in the raging debates between philosophers and physicists.

I think while rationality attempted to be parsimonious with regards to categorizing "truth" from our own biases, the fact is, this rationality is also traveling through the filters I mentioned earlier. From your point of view, you may have a dispassionate evaluation of "just the facts," but your biases, beliefs, culture, etc, will automatically preclude some "facts" from even being an option to you.

So overall I think introspection is valuable, but I am skeptical that "rationality" and introspection can really be two separate categories when armchair philosophizing. When building a bridge, yeah of course they are different, but when pondering philosophical questions, that becomes much less clear.

so let me see if I understand what you are saying. I am going to slightly alter the terms here, but maintain your logic.

Statement 1:

A circle is never the same as anything that is not a circle. Therefore, a circle is something that is never anything that is not a circle.

So basically: A is never the same as anything that is not A. Therefore, A is something that is never anything that is not A.

Statement 2:

Something existent is never the same as something non-existent. Therefore, something existent is something that is never non-existent.

So basically: A is never the same as B. Therefore, A is never B.

I simplified the argument using letters instead of your terms, but the logic is identical (irony intended)

Your argument here is that change is impossible. However, if you add certain elements to A, and it becomes B, haven't you produced a change? So even if the law of identity holds, transmutation is a possibility correct? It therefore follow that your second statement is false, and that your first statement is simply the law of identity, which as pointed out, does not negate transmutation from A to B given particular conditions.

My problem with "identity politics," is that, as you already highlighted in your OP, it reduces all conception of an individual or group to their identity. There are obviously more components of a person that we would not properly call "identity," although someone arguing against that might say everything is identity. The perfect example of this is to look at racial identity relative to economic location. Many in left spheres try to claim the racial identity is preeminent (or the gender or lack of gender), and that the class element is subordinate to the racial.

This argument fails. Suppose you have a white CEO, and a white gas station attendant. Are you going to argue that they both benefit from "white privilege" and should, as you highlighted, be restricted from access to the goods of distributive politics? Of course not. Change my example to a black CEO and black gas station attendant. Now factor in that the CEOs parents were Harvard professors, and the gas station attendant was raised by a single mother who dropped out of high school.

Reducing the analysis to race (which is usually what is focused on by identitarians) discounts at least the economic or class distinction, and so the analysis is grossly wanting.

So the way we cash this out is to point out that all politics might be identity politics, but what does one mean by identity, and how complete of a picture does this supposed identity give us about a particular group or individual. Furthermore, if you are taking a particular group, and there is a high degree of variation within the group, how useful is it to refer to this as one particular identity?

Identitarianism as it is currently practiced suffers from reductionistic thinking. It is not entirely useless, but must be tempered in order to generate coherent representations of human beings.

Since there is a mental state which relies on genetics, or some non-mental state, and this mental state is the first mental state, doesn't it follow that all subsequent mental states are in some way set on a trajectory by the "prime mover of mental states" (I am not talking about god), and thus, the configuration of the progenitor of mental states is really constraining the make-up of the mental states which follow from it? In my opinion, this would be an infringement on the freedom of a future mental state.

this is a beautiful and thoughtful post. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this. Many people cannot understand the coercive elements of our modern society, and they are of the opinion that we are "free," when clearly, the majority of people are anything but.

Eventually, a global social reformation will occur, and once all concepts damaging society and the physical world have been thoroughly eradicated, then the strength of the intellectual revolution shall prevail.

I hope you are right

I think your explanation is a good one. The illusory aspect of the change being the fact that it is really a transmutation, not a transformation, and the fact that nothing is static but all is in a state of transmutation.

Fair enough. I think that is a good analogy, and captures the idea behind this. We can be like the blind men describing the bits of the elephant we are interacting with, or we can stand afar and perceive with vision the entire elephant, and consequently be able to transfer what we see to the blind men, clearly, in ways that they might be able to understand. It's like when a doctor tells you what's wrong with you, they say it in plain, common language. They do not recite a passage from a medical journal.

I think a great analogy for this, is people who create artificial difficulty in video games. (like challenge runs) Some people have a taste for it, others do not. However, you can play the game like an average person and have a great time, but some people like to push a bit harder. When those artificial difficulty people talk to "normal gamers," they talk about the game in common terms, and they "go down to their level." They do not think it is condescending to the "normal gamer" to do this either.

If an artificial difficulty person goes to a "normal player," and tries to speak to them about the intricacies of imposing difficulty on oneself, it would probably be lost on the normal player, and if the difficulty person said "well you are just not a good player and you need to get better, I would not lower my skill level or knowledge of the game lore to speak with you, that would be insulting to you," the "normal player" would shrug and look at them like, "ok?"

It's all well and good if you are a super intelligent savant and you have read 100s maybe 1000s of books and you have wrestled with the loftier points of human intellectual achievement. I think that is something to celebrate. I agree, there is something to be said for challenging writing styles and speaking to bring the mind to rise to the occasion. But there is also something to be said for clear communication, in order to begin to illuminate the minds of those who have not arisen to those luminous heights through their own toil.

I agree with the general sentiment, and this is what makes writing in overly complicated ways (and by this I mean in ways that are not necessarily complicated) tiresome for readers.

Yes, I would agree, that most people would agree that optimizing communication can expedite transmitting ideas (which is supposedly the point of communicating). I had never heard of E-Prime, that is quite interesting, and I will have to look more into it and possibly try it out as a writing style. It says in that Wikipedia article:

"Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive"."

Good points. I do agree I think there is a lot more nuance than what my OP seems to suggest. I do think there are occasions where my post is apt, and others where it is not applicable.

interesting perspective thank you

If a mental state results from a previous mental state, going all the way back to the first brain state, like when a baby is looking into a mirror for example and begins the first stages of "thought," is there a primary state which is not the result of prior mental states? if so where does the information come from for that primary state?

I agree that there could be cases where my original argument applies. Also, with respect to Mww's and Janus's weighing in on this specific case, there are also examples of people lacking the reading background on a subject, or perhaps lacking even the ability to process the information in any meaningful way. In those cases, I suppose when encountering what appears to be esoteric would be a signal to improve the level of one's understanding before engaging. I think my OP may have been reactionary, even though many better mind's than mine weighed in with agreements, albeit, much better qualified and informed agreements. Getting the right answer for the wrong reasons is not something to celebrate. (As is probably the case with my OP)

You may be right, I might be misunderstanding. I am a lay person and fairly new to all of this stuff. I do not even have a degree so my lack of training might be showing

The ability of an actor to decide between two or more courses of action, based on that actors internal reasoning.

Assuming for the sake of argument that there is "internal deliberation," where does the information come from to initiate the deliberation process? Are there biological factors which influence the mental states, which are a function of brain activity (presumably)?

I was linking to the profile of the person with whom I was conversing, not directly to the conversation. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6513/arguments-for-free-will/p4 that takes you to the exchange.

Yeah I am okay with experts using jargon to expedite communication, I guess where I have an issue is when communication bogs down when one party decides to deliberately complicate their language. Reducing the bandwidth of information transfer between two parties fro arbitrary reasons seems rather useless.

Fair enough. I was having an echange with https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/3486/echarmion regarding determinism vs free will, and he appeared to exit the conversation when I asked him to define freedom, after he gave an argument about how freedom is a way to describe reality, which in my opinion was a confusing way to frame the argument, so I asked for a definition. This is actually what prompted me down this line of thinking which led to me beginning this discussion.

Edit: after looking a little harder, I see there is a response, it is just the way notifications work here, I was not notified because I was not "mentioned" in the reply

That is a good suggestion. I agree, this idea should be scrutinized, and I should not be allowed to just use it as a fall back position if I feel cornered in a debate, for example.

I do not disagree that to be challenged can be a good thing, and often esoteric communication can draw out the mind into a wider range of possible thoughts and symbols, which can deepen one's understanding.

My main complaint is that the point of communication is the transference of ideas, not the flexing of intellectual muscles or deliberately complicating what should be simple.

beautifully said. thank you for your contribution. As usual, you have provided a valuable insight.

Employing obscure vocabulary and terribly complex sentence structure does not signal insight, It is a bright flashing light leading us to an author who knows less than he or she seems to know.

Perhaps this bright flashing light is meant to be blinding, so as to protect the position from opposition

well it was intentional lol

Definitely agree with this, and I like the way you phrased it, with regard to being able to convey the idea to your son. (I especially like the part of defining terms in advance.)

I do not disagree with this. One thing I was noticing in this forum, that occasionally I will be speaking with someone, and we are talking about something that in my view, is relatively straightforward, like "freedom," for example. What I find is that their description is unjustifiably complex and esoteric, and in my opinion, this is not helpful. If you want to have a complicated discussion about something that is complex in its nature, I would agree wholeheartedly with you. However, if you are speaking with something that can be simplified, and you simply refuse to put it into more understandable terms, I don't think that is evidence of complexity, I think that is a pedagogical error.

I never thought about that. I guess what I perceived as "posturing," could easily be a veiling. My description made it sound more pernicious so I actually think your's is preferable. Thank you for sharing that Nietzsche quote, very nice.

Philosophies for All Occasions
Specializing in the Obfuscational

Hilarious!

I agree, and I usually try to ask people to clarify things, unless they just have a such a different world view, than I usually just agree to disagree

lol

I do agree with you, as that is what is implied with the whole idea of jargon being time-saving. I guess I should have been a bit more clear as to my target I was aiming at. I was really meaning to talk about conversations in this forum, wherein we do not know who we are speaking with, and it appears that some conversations just get lost in this sort of "intellectual posturing."

Great :) !

Again, we have vastly different world views. I think it is best to agree to disagree.