HD is a little clunky at times, yes, but mostly on multiplayer.

I'm not really familiar with that phrase, so I don't have an intuitive grasp for what it includes versus excludes. — Terrapin Station

Concrete particular objects, the subjects of predicate statements. If we predicate the mind as physicalists, then the mind is a physical object. There are no concrete subjects that are not-physical.

What are you referring to there--the word? The concept (or meaning as you suggest in the next sentence)? Are you positing a necessary, real universal? — Terrapin Station

Yes, I am positing the necessary existence of a property, physicality, for the doctrine of physicalism. If everything is physical, then it needs to be explained what makes everything physical. Doing so, in my view, can only be accomplished by positing the existence of some"thing" that is not a concrete, physical object but nevertheless is necessary for concrete objects to even exist.

So you've been thinking that "physicalism" simply amounts to people who believe that some, but not all, of "what there is" is physical? Contra people who think that nothing is physical, maybe? — Terrapin Station

I consider physicalism to be the doctrine that whatever exists "on the stage" so to speak is "physical", whatever that entails. "Physical" itself cannot be "physical" without being empty of meaning. It has to mean something, and it can only mean something if there are alternatives.

Okay this is the last time you play this trick before I call it quits. Yes, it is circular reasoning the way you phrased/reasoned it initially. Now you just rephrased it and pretend I did not notice it. — Emptyheady

Calm down, stop acting like I'm contradicting myself, and start actually presenting arguments.

Humans can suffer. Check.

Non-human animals can suffer. Check.

We treat others humans with respect because they can feel, just like we ourselves can. We also expect them to act accordingly because they are rational agents. Check.

We treat non-human animals with respect because they can feel, just like we ourselves can, but we do not expect them to act morally because they are not moral agents. Check.

The capacity to be a rational moral agent is not what is needed to be seen as morally important. That is what you need to respond to.

That is fine. Like I said our moral philosophies differ. The keyword here is "suffering." I care more about (individual) rights than suffering. — Emptyheady

And so you can just assert whatever the hell you want, but as soon as I say something you call me out on it?

Caring about individual rights instead of suffering is absurd. We care about individual rights in virtue of how doing so causally affects the welfare of those we deem worthy of having rights.

It's not physicalism if it posits there there are things in the world that aren't physical (whatever a particular species of physicalism considers "physical" to denote, exactly). — Terrapin Station

If that is what physicalism entails then I doubt anyone would actually want to call themselves a physicalist.

Like a dog chasing its own tail. I am a bit tired at this moment, is this circular reasoning or just an tautology... — Emptyheady

No, it's not circular reasoning.

Animals have the right not to be abused because they can suffer. The same reason why humans have the right not to be abused.

As long as you are a human being, you remain to have moral agency and therefore human rights. That is because humans have a special property of moral responsibility -- call them moral agents or moral actors if you'd like. — Emptyheady

And it is exactly this line of reasoning that I reject. You don't have to have moral agency in order to qualify for rights.

Okay, but if they're not physical, then it's not physicalism. — Terrapin Station

But it can still be physicalism, as long as we limit particulars that exist as being physical. The properties of particulars may not be physical themselves. But in order to talk about physicalism, we have to know what physical even consists in, and it won't due to simply say the tautology "everything that exists is physical, and what is physical is everything that exists".

Come now... such a rash and lazy reasoning. The fact that you can abuse animals does not entail that animals have rights. You can also abuse buildings, plants (e.g. trees) and cars -- you can even get legally punished by doing so, but none of this entail "rights" like human rights.

Note that this is an otiose point. This specific point is regarding its controversy. It adds nothing to the crux of this discussion, but I found it interesting to mention nonetheless. I took some classes in law. The fact that animals have no rights was uncontroversially true (legally). The moral case is easily made as well. — Emptyheady

You can't abuse something that doesn't have the right to not be abused. There's no "lazy" thinking going on here.

Suffering is not the basis of my moral philosophy. Besides, laws are more about rights than suffering anyway. — Emptyheady

I disagree. The capacity to suffer qualifies something as morally important. Things have rights in virtue of the fact that they can feel, or are related to things that can feel.

We might have to discuss some metaethics at a deeper level, but if we agree that humans are capable of acting morally and animals not without equivocating, then we can take it from there. If you disagree, then we should look where exactly we differ and how humans are morally different from animals. — Emptyheady

Not being a moral agent doesn't mean one isn't morally important. We can't expect infants to act rationally or morally and yet we treat them with respect. And yet many non-human animals have a greater capacity of rationality than human infants.

It sounds like you're saying that under physicalism, "universals" are simply the properties that obtain via particulars. But that's not realism on universalism at all--that's nominalism. — Terrapin Station

Not necessarily, realism about universals would be that these properties, obtained by particulars, are one and the same across particulars. They are not physical, they are properties, universals, just as physicality is a universal.

Your claims are controversial. Morally and legally speaking, animals do not have rights the way humans do. This is pretty much a consensus everywhere in the world. — Emptyheady

Yeah, no, this is completely wrong. Animals have rights, recognized across the (developed) world. Animal abuse is a thing because animals have rights.

Non-human animals might not be able to vote but they can certainly suffer.

Would that include fields? Fields are studied by physicists, their effects can be detected by instruments, but they have nothing in common with physical objects, because they're not physical objects, and some of them are not detectable except in terms of their effects. — Wayfarer

I mean that's generally why I don't see the point in calling things "physical", it inevitably leaves things out or is so broad as to be indistinguishable from simply "being" in the naturalistic sense.

But I believe that no matter how exotic things are, they nevertheless have properties that make them what they are.

Letters on a computer screen can only exist on a computer screen. It doesn't make sense to talk about the computational letter "B" in Times New Roman outside of its existence on a computer screen.

Similarly it doesn't make sense to talk of things like mass or shape outside of how they are instantiated by physical objects. I already said that physicality and other universals are not necessarily identical, but I also said that physical universals are "physical" in that they cannot be instantiated apart from physicality. They are separate properties but are unable to be separated.

Aristotelian substance is the name for the thing that exists without predicates, in which everything else is predicated of. You cannot have universals without substance, but without universals substance isn't anything discernible.

Easy. Animals have no rights and can therefore be used as property/utility by moral agents (i.e. humans). — Emptyheady

The exact same reasoning was used to justify racial discrimination, segregation, and extermination.

Okay, but you're positing an entity that's not identical to its instantiations in particulars, right? What I'm asking you is how that entity is physical. — Terrapin Station

Well, I mean, universal theorists don't have to be Platonists. We can be Aristotelian and believe that universals actually exist in the world and aren't just cheap knock-offs of the ones in the Platonic World of Forms.

So if I were a transcendental Platonist then yes, the Platonic Forms would not be physical, they would be "something else". If I were an Aristotelian immanent theorist, then universals would be physical if essentially paired with the universal of physicality.

Re the parts in italics above, and especially the terms in bold, how would the entities in question be physical? Where would they be instantiated first off? — Terrapin Station

So the question is, how are universals physical? I would argue that "physicality" is a universal itself.

There's no "physical" and then "everything else" on top of it. What makes a universal physical is whether or not it is necessarily instantiated only in cases in which the property of physicality is instantiated.

If we're non-physicalists, like dualists, say, then we would say that the property of "blue-ness" is non-physical, perhaps mental, in virtue of the fact that "blue-ness" does not exist outside of the mind, and is thus a mental property. i.e. a property of the mind, vs a property of the physical.

The Mongols and Spanish in AoE2 are so fucking OP.

Surely it would be that universals like "the perfect triangle" or "perfect body proportion" are just an ideas within our minds and hold no physical existence outside of our thinking of them. — intrapersona

You don't have to believe in Platonic universals to believe in universals. Nevertheless Platonic universals are quite helpful with many problems.

Why does it sound like philosophers are saying that certain ideas of objects and forms actually have an existence outside of the mind? That just sounds silly, yet I know I am missing something here...

Just to confirm, physicalism and universals are non-compatible right? — intrapersona

No, this is false.

All universal theorists are arguing for is the existence of an entity that somehow exists in multiple places at the same time. The red of that firetruck is similar to the red of that fire hydrant in virtue of the fact that both objects instantiate the universal "red-ness".

It can be helpful to think of properties as ways objects are. Universal theorists think that these "ways" are repeatable entities. Those with the same property are literally instantiating the same universal.

Furthermore, it should be noted that not every single property has to be a universal, or has to have a copy somewhere. The more complex systems become the more likely unique arrangements of atoms will occur, arrangements that may never occur ever again.

Thus similarity is oftentimes not literal same-ness but rather a close resemblance in virtue of instantiating a certain number of similar universals, but perhaps not all.

The irrationality of Pascal's Wager is that it doesn't follow in the way your A1 and A2 example does. It strictly assumes that a single God, usually the Christian God, is the only proper choice of theistic belief.

Indeed Pascal's Wager is often used as a trump card; when all other forms of argument fail, just claim that it's more reasonable to believe in God than to not believe in God.

Trouble arises when we realize that the Abrahamic God is not the only conception of God, and benevolence and rationality is not the only possible dispositions of God. In fact a cursory look at the world casts his benevolence and rationality into doubt.

Pascal's Wager is flawed because, like what others said, it discounts the existence of another different deity, or assumes the deity is reasonable and benevolent. The Wager is not rational.

Unfortunately death bed conversions are typically not rational either.

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." — aletheist

I like this quote but at the same time dislike it. It can be seen as a pragmatic way of bypassing tedious debates, or it can be a way of affirming the status quo. What we "know" in our hearts is oftentimes "socially constructed". We see this a lot in ethics.

Um... those five items are of vital importance. — lambda

Then don't you think we should keep trying to figure them out?

If you don't know whether your cognitive faculties are reliable, whether you're dreaming, whether the people around you are conscious, whether you are truly morally responsible for your actions, or whether the walls of your room continue to exist when you're not experiencing them, then you are in a state of total intellectual paralysis. — lambda

False. Life is filled with assumptions. You will keep on living and breathing even if you don't know if anyone else exists. Much has been written about this.

You may say that philosophy is an absolute joke, but this is quite silly as your own statement is philosophical. So you have to constrain your view to a certain kind of philosophy, but you haven't.

Furthermore, the worthiness of some things is dependent upon what you personally find to be valuable. If you value finding something that can be implemented in the capitalistic society in which you live, then maybe philosophy isn't for you. But philosophy isn't itself constrained by capitalism and so those who study it don't really give a damn what anyone else thinks. That's called free-thinking.

Have you done any better? lmao

Some things can still be valuable even if you never actually finish it.

You provide, what, five examples (a big number, five! wow!), and apparently this "disproves" the value of philosophy?

Skepticism hasn't won by being right, it's won by those practicing it being lazy. If there was a better way of getting answers we'd being doing it already. Unfortunately, there isn't, but some of us still find value in thinking about these sorts of things anyway to the scoffing dismay of our capitalist overlords.

The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity. — lambda

Quite ironic how you use human reasoning to come to an absurd conclusion...

Nor, however, have I ever known a made-by-women feminist list like yours, except the ones drawn up by antagonistic men who were trying to discredit a much subtler and more illuminating set of ideas. I don't think such lists ever make sense. There is an analysis of patriarchy, there are theories, there are ideas for action. There aren't simple bullet-points of anti-men statements to swallow before a radfem bedtime. Perhaps I'm naive, but overthrowing patriarchy always seemed to me a good idea. — mcdoodle

Dworkin I know was against the idea of female superiority, but my point was that some radical feminists continue to believe that men ought to be exterminated, and are highly sex-negative.

So you don't think that things can be predicated of formal and final causes? — apokrisis

No, I think they can, I just don't think causes "exist" as some kind of ephemeral entity of sorts. I'm more into dispositionalism. Causal nets based upon thresh-hold dispositional properties, not too dissimilar to Scholastic realist conceptions of causality.

"I myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of “react with the other like things in the environment.”

"I define the real as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched." — apokrisis

So, noumenon?

What is the difference between "everyday feminism" and "radical feminism (radfem)"?

Just from what I have read so far in things like the SCUM manifesto and Cell 16, radfem is not really about egalitarianism but more about the superiority of the female sex.

What's interesting about the author of the SCUM manifesto is that although she thinks the female sex is superior, it seems like she thinks that this is only because the male sex is fucked up and the female sex is less-fucked up. Indeed she had antinatalist beliefs, where she essentially said that the male sex had to be exterminated, and then the female sex would only have female babies until a little later, when the female sex would also be exterminated.

And yes, I understand that the SCUM manifesto might have been satirical but it nevertheless spawned things like Cell 16.

Anyway some defining characteristics of radfem that I have seen and would like to discuss seem to be:

• PIV sex, or any sex for that matter, is outdated, crude, and oppressive towards women. "PIV = rape".
• Heterosexual relationships in general are outdated and crude.
• The Patriarchy is still a very real threat to the autonomy of females (male and female tend to be used more than men and women) and must be destroyed.
• Males only have relationships with females for their sexual appeal.
• Males are the number one reason why the world is so fucked up.
• Males are problematic members of society and should be phased out of existence.
• Females who have heterosexual relationships with males are brainwashed and simply allowing the problem of the Patriarchy to continue.
• Makeup, fashion, and body care are the product of a Patriarchal brainwashing. Heterosexuality might also be the result of brainwashing.
• Males and females should be separated and live in isolated communities away from each other.
• It is not possible to live in an egalitarian society that has mixed sexes.
• Transsexuals "rape" the opposite sex and have a brain disorder.
• Women are, all things considered, "superior".

I might be wrong about some/most/all of the things stated above, but please keep in mind that I'm only beginning to get a grasp of what radical feminism is.

More mainsteam feminism, in my opinion, should just be called egalitarianism. Anything that focuses on the rights of a single group should be labeled as such.

You believe that nothing is real unless it exists - i.e., that there are only material/efficient causes and brute facts? — aletheist

No, I think they exist but they have be predicate-able. To me, it doesn't even make any sense to talk of something that has no discernible nature but somehow is causally relevant.

Good job I don't say principles "exist". Or that they are "brute facts".

And saying that about properties would be inconsistent too. — apokrisis

Then I can safely disregard anything you say about principles, since they do not exist and are thus irrelevant.

Well, only the one. Apeiron. Or however we would best understand that appeal to material principle in our best physicalist theories. — apokrisis

A "monism" that is irreducibly complex in being a triadic process. — apokrisis

Which is it?

But the whole point - following triadic hylomorphism - is that whatever the material principle is, it can't be itself substantial in the kind of sense you have in mind. It can't already possess properties, as positive properties are the product of formal causes, or constraints. — apokrisis

Then what exactly is it?

Why can't we say that there are some properties that exist thanks to a history and some properties just are, brute fact? Saying that a "principle" exists and yet denying that abstract transcendental properties exist seems like word play.

A mystic. A pseudo philosopher. — apokrisis

You realize this is, as of now, an unjustified opinion?

So after the Big Bang, the bath of radiation cools enough and massive, slower than light, particles emerge. A lucky asymmetry means that nearly all of the negative anti-protons have gone, likewise nearll all of the positive anti-electrons. That lets you have some persistent basic ingredients - oppositely charged electrons and protons. From there, you can get stellar physics and planetary chemisty.

So the emergence of complex materiality - stuff with properties - is no big deal at all. What is a big deal is getting behind that to the story of how anything could emerge to start the story in the first place. — apokrisis

The problem I see with this is that it still doesn't prove anything about universals, because you use universals in the description. Or, to be precise, you use natural kinds like anti-protons, anti-electrons, radiation. Or you use descriptions without a subject, like "symmetry" or "asymmetry" but these must be predicated of something in order to be even coherent.

You said yourself that there are some persistent basic ingredients (these can endure but complex structures can't, I guess?), yet what makes these basic ingredients what they are? Properties. And we're back to square one: how do we see the property of negative charge of an electron as? A universal, a trope, what?

The nominalist is going to argue that the fact that we use universals in our scientific language descriptions doesn't prove jack shit about the actual reality of properties.

People call Whitehead a process philosopher. I don't. I am arguing pansemiotics, not panpsychism. — apokrisis

Then what would you consider him to be? He is basically univocally seen as a process philosopher. You can't just assert that he's not.

And you don't need a middle ground between substance and process as the argument is that substantial being is a process. — apokrisis

Yet this becomes a monism. You reduce substance to process, in the same way Aristotle would reduce process to substance.

The larger point is that religious thinking about science has a tendency to latch on to the uncertainties necessarily latent at the bleeding edge of science, rather than at any point where the scientific work is well established. In every case it's just low hanging, God-of-the-gaps bullshit, a kind of desperation to slot God in to any (rapidly diminishing) space available. A theology with a bit of dignity ought to probably find the divine at work in everything, but then again, the theological engagement with the sciences gave up it's dignity long ago. — StreetlightX

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I would also say that scientists can also be blamed for making wild assertions based upon the very latest theories and not the history of theorizing and paradigm shifting. This is one of the reasons why I generally take appeals to contemporary science, like neuroscience or cosmology, with a grain of salt, because the theories are likely going to change in the future and that by itself gives very little, if any, solid foundation for a metaphysical claim.

Anyone who tries to 'prove God doesn't exist' has already conceded too much to theology - has taken God to be in any way a legitimate problem at all. — StreetlightX

I agree, this is also why I hesitate to call myself an atheist. Atheism is too strong of a position to hold.

Not God's 'existence' but his relevance ought to be perpetually put into question - which is why I much prefer 'naturalism' to 'atheism', insofar as the latter is still too oppositionally defined by a relation to the divine. I would prefer simply not to care about the very idea of God, let alone to argue 'against' it. — StreetlightX

Yeah, apatheism has been sort of my mode of operation for a while. Although I'm getting interested in it all as of late. A personal argument I have against theology though is sort of anti-theistic in nature: that there is suffering in the world, if God exists he should be condemned for not preventing this from happening, and because of this God does not deserve to be studied.

One can only face palm at a comment like this. Does this everyday concrete stuff exist, or is it simply how we construct our experience of it? — apokrisis

Umm, okay? I'm asking what the difference in "real-ness" you see to be between something like an asteroid and "symmetry" of "something" like vagueness of whatever.

If something exists, and if this something can be known to us, then it must be able to be predicated upon. The predicates latch on to properties, or at least describe a collection of simpler properties.

What do you mean? I'm saying substantial being is a process. And that is opposed to the view that substance has fundamental existence rather than pragmatic persistence. — apokrisis

Well cause I remember sometime in the past you thought people like Whitehead were too extreme in their metaphysics and that there had to be a middle ground between process and substance.

Great. — apokrisis

Fantastic.

There's a great big world filled with suffering, sadness, pain, and need, and you sit idly by connected to a cold machine pushing a Sisyphus button with fervor. — Hanover

Video games help with altruistic burnout. Playing old-school video games is inexpensive, recuperative and sublimative.

But generally the video game industry is one of excess, not only in money but also in (im)morality. Skimpy boob armor is not armor.

So it would be circular for a metaphysics to try to account for dynamical particulars in terms of "just more dynamics". A semiotic approach to metaphysics is different precisely because it accounts for universals in terms of sign relations. The realm of symbols - or informational constraints - gives the "universals" a real place to exist, much like Plato's realm of ideas. The difference is that this informational aspect of existence is thoroughly physicalist and doesn't need the mind or ideas to be a second kind of substantial being. — apokrisis

The part I get tripped up on is when you explain the existence of universals like redness or hardness of whatever by appealing to things like sign relations, symbols, constraints, information, etc. Are these things not universals in themselves? You said they were similar to Plato's realm of ideas - are they "less real" than the concrete stuff we experience everyday?

Whoosh. I hear the noise of words flying right over your head again. — apokrisis

:-}

Why must you be so arrogantly patronizing all the time?

But you can hardly claim to be saying anything interesting about metaphysics these days if you throw up your hands in horror when someone mentions holographic bounds and least action principles. — apokrisis

Well because holographic bounds and least action principles are incoherent, at least to me, without a proper context, and especially because they aren't anything at all unless they have certain qualities, or properties, which is exactly what we're talking about here.

So you can say that the properties of bread: its doughiness, flexibility, warmth, etc come from external constraints like the heat of the oven, the yeast, etc. But these things also have properties themselves.

So as it says on the bottle, this is process philosophy. And both the particular and the universal are things that only "exist" in the sense of being features of processes. — apokrisis

I thought you didn't like the binary between substance and process.

The best way to ontologise that view is then - as Peirce did - to divide reality into constraints and freedoms. Universals are the contextual reality. They are the general habits, the global tendencies. And particulars are the events that are regularly produced, the outcomes that may share family similarities but also express an irreducible spontaneity or indeterminism. — apokrisis

Right, okay. This is basically what I already said. Universals are general patterns and particulars are specifics.

Reality is the process of becoming real. And reality is characterised by its general stablity - its long-run, self-sustaining, dynamical equilibrium. To exist is really just to persist in a way where continuing change does not result in significant change. — apokrisis

Right, I agree. There are no such things as enduring objects.

Right, since nominalism rejects any and all abstracta.

That's right. That's why I am arguing against nominalism. — apokrisis

Right, okay, because before I thought you were conflating universalism with the thesis that particulars don't exist, which would indeed create an extreme binary.

But how do properties emerge into crisp being if vague being isn't what they are leaving behind? — apokrisis

So A changes to B, are you saying the time between the change is the vagueness?

The problem with your kind of ontology is that it can't explain existence as a causal development. Existence is just some dumb brute fact. Or maybe God invented it. — apokrisis

Well, I mean, I'm not trying to explain the existence of causal development. I'm trying to explain how universals have to exist in some way.

Shame that hypothesis doesn't fit the facts then. The evidence that the cosmos keeps spitting out the same entities, the same patterns, can be seen everywhere we look. (Have you heard of fractals or powerlaws?) — apokrisis

Yes, I know all about those, please stop antagonizing me. Once again, I'm out to show how nominalism is false and that it defends an indefensible monism.

So why the problem when I take something like universals to be real, and then offer a modern infodynamic account? — apokrisis

Because some of us have no formal training in whatever fields you are referring to and thus your words come across as esoteric gish gallops.

But also because you use a framework to explain the same framework. Universals exist, because symmetry is a universal. That's begging the question. Nominalists don't deny that symmetry exists, they deny that symmetry is a universal. You need to explain why universals have to exist without just ignoring the actual question; i.e. using "scientific" terminology to explain something that is usually empirically transparent.

One can be a speculative naturalist without, for all that, simply falling into the black hole of scientism. — StreetlightX

True, one simply has to make sure that what one is inquiring about is not part of the scientific enterprise.

It doesn't help either that the constant and brazenly fallacious appeal-to-ignorance that is the invocation of quantum theory is basically the last refuge of the theological scoundrel, having been driven from literally every single other explanatory level of existence other than where - surprise, surprise - the dark and fuzzy frontier of scientific knowledge lies. There's a reason you don't get religious kooks barking shrill over the divine properties of say, silicon chip engineering. At some point, apparently, the perpetual embarrassment tips over into shame. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure if this is accurate, at least for all theologians. I'm only beginning my study of theology and philosophy of religion, but it seems to me that it is the atheist that commonly begs the question. The point of natural theology is to use empirical observations about the world to make an argument for something that cannot possibly be empirically tested but nevertheless is seen as necessary or important in some way. I don't think the cosmological argument has really been "refuted" by science. Teleology has been shoved aside as reductionist accounts of causality have emerged but it is precisely the latter that depends solely on the material and formal causes and continues to run into difficulties.

So I'm confused as to why you used quantum theory as an example of the "last refuge" of the theologian. Because it's not really the case that (serious) theologians (and not your neighborhood evangelical) are shoe-horning God into the picture. It's rather that atheistic (pop-) scientists are shoe-horning atheism into things like the Big Bang, evolution, and quantum mechanics in order to "prove" God does not exist and it's the theologians that have to fight back and explain why it's actually not so black and white. Theologians often get stuck in a kafkatrap.

If the less-than-century year old debate over this disqualifies naturalism as a viable position, then theology ought to be once and for all confined not simply to the trashcan of history but it's landfill. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure. Theology and metaphysics generally don't try to be "sciences" although their practitioners sometimes like to play dress-up and pretend they're scientists of the divine or ontological scientists or what have you.

We expect results from science. When we don't get them, it's probably because we screwed up somewhere and need to re-assess the situation.

We don't necessarily expect results from theology or metaphysics. These two disciplines, in my opinion, are not deserving of the title "discipline" but are nevertheless important (at least the latter is, not sure about theology as I'm leaning towards atheism) as speculative attempts at understanding.

Freedom is a funny thing. — Wosret

Every time someone uses the word "freedom" I always have the urge to yell "OBJECTION" and demand they define what they actually mean by freedom.

Best definition of free will I can muster is the idea that one could have chosen otherwise. I don't really think it's coherent though since we have to ask why you chose what you did. In which case you basically just have to say "I dunno" since any appeals to anything else would be determinism.

If one believes so then they will be inclined to start believing in their superiority over other groups of people or their absolute beliefs about themselves. Dangerous stuff. — Question

But that wouldn't be very objective, would it? Nietzsche is calling for us to become poets of our own lives and try to understand who we are, like who we really are.