well, that answer was no use.

Spaceship Earth! No obvious destination though! — Agent Smith

that's a philosophical problem. I think it's usually called 'Why are we Here?' :chin:

Fair enough. But I find that hard to reconcile with what else you've been saying. If everything simply is as it seems, then what is there to analyse?

Right. I've started a sci-fi novel on a similar idea to that, although I can't find the motivation to finish it. In any case, we have a spaceship suitable for possibly hundreds of millions of years, but it's over-heated, overcrowded and resource-depleted. That is the one that needs our attention.

Incidentally I don't place G E Moore's refutation of idealism anywhere beyond Johnson's argumentum ad lapidem. 'Here is a hand' is no more a refutation than kicking a rock.

Here is the abstract for Mind and Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter:

The topic of this book is the relationship between mind and the physical world. From once being an esoteric question of philosophy, this subject has become a central topic in the foundations of quantum physics. The book traces this story back to Descartes, through Kant, to the beginnings of 20th Century physics, where it becomes clear that the mind-world relationship is not a speculative question but has a direct impact on the understanding of physical phenomena.

The book’s argument begins with the British empiricists who raised our awareness of the fact that we have no direct contact with physical reality, but it is the mind that constructs the form and features of objects. It is shown that modern cognitive science brings this insight a step further by suggesting that shape and structure are not internal to objects, but arise in the observer. The author goes yet further by arguing that the meaningful connectedness between things — the hierarchical organization of all we perceive — is the result of the Gestalt nature of perception and thought, and exists only as a property of mind. These insights give the first glimmerings of a new way of seeing the cosmos: not as a mineral wasteland but a place inhabited by creatures.

This is true, but these are all experiences of the one thing as seen by different beings? It's a type of species-perspectivism, perhaps, but the same object is in play. This notions seems more like a phenomenology. — Tom Storm

I think the Kantian answer is that the purported one thing is not known to us and that positing 'the real apple' is what Kant calls 'transcendental realism', i.e. that there's a real object beyond our perception of it.

I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. — CPR, A369

As I replied to that post, when one's mind constructs reality, what is it mind constructs it from? — Banno

I thought I'd answered. The bare data of experience are unintelligible until they're synthesized in the act of perception into the panorama of mental life. Whereas you think that there's a real world, out there, and an idea, in here, not seeing that this is itself a mental construction.

experience is a mental phenomena, that there is no direct connection between mental phenomena and external world objects, and that the qualities of mental phenomena are not properties of external world objects. — Michael

In that case, you have no reason to expect that mathematics would make accurate predictions.

When you look at the apple, your brain constructs a model of the apple. But that model is not what you see; it is you seeing — Banno

The act of seeing is precisely the construction of a gestalt - not a model as such, because a model represents something. But the gestalt is the apple - as explained in this post.

A bat would have a different range of experiences with this fruit, but it would still be of the apple, right? — Tom Storm

Splendid question. To a fruit-fly, an apple is host to its eggs. If I throw an apple at an annoying bird, it's a weapon. To fruit bats and primates it is food, whereas it wouldn't necessarily register to a carnivore. Which is 'the real apple'?

Are idealists suggesting that matter has no inherent qualities and that these are provided by conscious creatures in the world, therefore reality is generated by mind? — Tom Storm

Materialists say that matter has no inherent qualities - only mass, velocity, position, etc. Qualities are what the mind brings to those raw materials to construct a gestalt which it then designates as apple (or whatever.) But materialism forgets the role of judgement in all that, because it's not present amongst the purported 'primary qualities of objects'.

I would say, reality is not generated by the mind but that everything we experience and know is generated by the mind. But we cannot see that process of construction ('vorstellung' in Schopenhauer, 'vikalpa' in Buddhism) 'from the outside', as it is the act of cognition. That's why it's a not a model as such. That's where representative realism fails, because it implies two entities - the model and the object it represents. But, 'In order to make a comparison, we must know what it is that we are comparing, namely, the model on the one hand and the object on the other. But if we already know the reality, why do we need to make a comparison? And if we don't know the reality, how can we make a comparison?' (Cribbed from a textbook quote somewhere in another thread.)

Take a moment to peruse this book - have a look at the abstracts. It's a current title, published 2021, and covers this territory, not from a philosophical, but a more scientific, pov.

I'm utterly sceptical about the prospects for interstellar travel. The distances involved are simply too vast to be contemplated, outside of science fiction anyway. Have a read of the logistics of Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Starshot. The aim is to send microchip-based sensors to Alpha Centauri, propelled by laser beams focused on 'lightsails'.

Light propulsion requires enormous power: a laser with a gigawatt of power (approximately the output of a large nuclear plant) would provide only a few newtons of thrust. The spaceship will compensate for the low thrust by having a mass of only a few grams. The camera, computer, communications laser, a nuclear power source, and the solar sail must be miniaturized to fit within a mass limit. All components must be engineered to endure extreme acceleration, cold, vacuum, and protons. The spacecraft will have to survive collisions with space dust; Starshot expects each square centimeter of frontal cross-section to collide at high speed with about a thousand particles of size at least 0.1 μm. Focusing a set of lasers totaling one hundred gigawatts onto the solar sail will be difficult due to atmospheric turbulence, so there is the suggestion to use space-based laser infrastructure. According to The Economist, at least a dozen off-the-shelf technologies will need to improve by orders of magnitude.

And that's sending for sending microchips about the size of your thumbnail. Note the craft are accelerated at 10,000g - which raises another point. If you put humans in a vehicle it would take > 30 years simply to accelerate to a feasible sub-light-speed velocity, and even moving at that speed, the journey to the nearest interstellar objects would be thousands of years in duration. Longer than the elapse of time between today and the construction of the pyramids.

Frankly, I believe the science-fiction longing for interstellar travel is actually a sublimated desire for heaven, which is deemed to no longer exist by our materialist culture.

I don't see how our thoughts are any different to the "marks or shapes or whatever" in that they lack 'inherent' meaning. We might find meaning in them on reflection, but I don't see any evidence that the meaning is inherent. — Isaac

How can there be anything to discuss, then? You’re not saying anything, you’re just making marks that show up on a screen. I might interpret them to mean anything whatever, and you wouldn’t be able to correct that. You’re sawing off the branch on which you sit.

Google Alva Noe 'Out of our Heads'.

Thoughts aren't entities capable of possessing inherent properties, and even if they were, what kind of analysis produced the conclusion that they had inherent meaning? — Isaac

What did you just ask? Your question has 'inherent meaning' doesn't it? You didn't just blurt out random sounds (and in fact you're asking very good and meaningful questions.)

By ink marks, are you talking about Rorsasch tests? Let's keep it simple. You as a rational sentient being can interpret written words, and also you can interpret situations, life itself - all manner of things. That is something you bring to picture, not something in the picture itself. A string of characters means nothing to someone who doesn't understand the language it's written in - so the meaning isn't inherent in the character string, but in the mind of the observer who reads it. Same, ultimately, with situations, even with life itself.

So I think Ed Feser's point is a perfectly clear one: that neural processes, like marks or shapes or whatever, have no inherent meaning, but that we read meaning into them. We are meaning-creating and meaning-seeking beings. In fact, I aver, that is what it means to be 'a being'.

I think it's that the brain uses models that enhance the competence of the organism by creating expectations, which is just a theory. — Tate

A couple of more snippets from the book I'm currently reading, Mind and the Cosmic Order (I've quoted it a bit the last few days).

Sensations, beliefs, imaginings and feelings are often referred to as figments, that is, creations of the mind. A mental image is taken to be something less than real: For one thing, it has no material substance and is impossible to detect except in the mind of the perceiver. It is true that sensations are caused by electrochemical events in a brain, but when experienced by a living mind, sensations are decisively different in kind from electrons in motion. They are indeed “figments” because they exist nowhere except in awareness. As a matter of fact, they exist only as claims made by sentient beings, with no material evidence to back up those claims. Indeed, brain scans reveal electrical activity, but do not display sensations or inner experience. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p. 52) Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition

This is, of course, a reference to the hard problem of consciousness, but that is tangential to his main argument, which is that:

One of the most important insights of contemporary brain science is that the visual world is a constructed reality. When we look, what we hold in awareness is not an optical array but a mental construct, built from information in the array, which presents us with all that is of value to us in a scene. — ibid

Pinter makes a similar point in much more detail - that the objects of scientific analysis are mathematical representations of simples, like straight lines, force, weight, and so on. None of them have any inherent meaning, either, until a human observer combines them into a gestalt, a meaningful whole, which is the fundamental element of cognition.

One alternative is something like Wayfarer may be proposing; a distinctly spiritual entity haunting the brain. — Banno

Don't forget that in the origins of philosophy, what the philosopher always sought was to see 'what is' - which is the precursor to 'the essence'. Going back to the definition of 'nous' again:

In Aristotle's influential works, which are the main source of later philosophical meanings, nous was carefully distinguished from sense perception, imagination, and reason, although these terms are closely inter-related. ...In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. For him then, discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways. — Wikipedia

(I have to say, the more increase in my scant knowledge of Aristotle, the more impressed I am.)

I maintain that we as a rule don't see 'things as they are' but we see with eyes that are already conditioned by pre-conceptions, inclinations, and all manner of other factors. That Aristotelian principle became in the scholastics the basis of 'the rational soul' which is the element of the being which sees 'things as they truly are' - which we, the hoi polloi, as a rule, do not. So that 'spiritual element' eventually developed as 'the rational soul' of scholastic philosophy (although I'm still in the process of trying to grasp what became of that idea.) But the gist of it is, that nous is the faculty which grasps what truly is. It's one of the main tributaries of science itself.

the difference seems to be that for you this capacity is entirely distinct from our neurones, but I suspect it is just something they do. — Banno

Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes. — Edward Feser

distinctly spiritual entity haunting the brain. — Banno

Which is the capacity to discern meaning.

:100: The machine is in the ghost.

And also a quote from a current source, namely, the technologist-turned-philosopher Federico Faggin, in whose book Silicon we find an account of an 'awakening experience':

The entire experience lasted perhaps one minute, and it changed me forever. My relationship with the world had always been as a separate observer perceiving the universe as outside myself and disconnected from me. What made this event astonishing was its impossible perspective because I was both the experiencer and the experience. I was simultaneously the observer of the world and the world. I was the world observing itself! I was concurrently knowing that the world is made of a substance that feels like love, and that I am that substance! — Federico Faggin

Worth noting, and oft-overlooked, is the fact Kant authorizes the conception of noumena, but never....not once....ever gives an example of an object that represents that conception. — Mww

Thanks, that is a helpful discussion from you. Bear with me here, I want to tease out a point which I only have a hazy grasp of myself.

There is in Greek philosophy a distinction made between phenomenon (what appears) and noumenon (what truly is). The noumenal object is, then, an object of the intellect (nous, noetic), in that it is something - a principle, or a deductive proof - which is understood by the intellect in a manner different to that of sensory knowledge. It comprises the grasping of a concept, not the discerning of a shape or some such (preserved in the saying 'to know with mathematical certainty'.)

This is what I think Schopenhauer was commenting on - he is accusing Kant of ignoring this classical distinction and instead appropriating the term 'noumenal' to serve a different purpose in his own philosophy, without respecting the sense in which 'noumenal' was used in Greek philosophy.

Now, there's a passage in one of Lloyd Gerson's essays which is relevant to this point.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

Likewise a comment on Aquinas' theory of knowledge which makes the same point (derived from Aristotle):

if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

Now that is plainly a different matter from what Kant intends with reference to the unknowable thing in itself, although there often seems to be a certain equivocation. But the point about the Aristotelian-Platonist attitude is that complete knowledge is only possible for intelligible objects, because in knowing them, there is in some sense a unity with them, which is plainly impractical with the objects of sense, which are all separate by definition. Whereas the introduction of the ding an sich in Kant acts in a different role.

@Tom Storm - the point I got to in the post that dissappeared was the results that come back if you google the term union of knower and known. (Interesting that the first entry on the list is Islamic, also derived from Aristotle.)

Yes, nous is preserved in the vernacular, but it had a deep and rich meaning in classical philosophy.

That idea of the union of knower and known is foundational to non-dualism. I have been reading Federico Faggini's biography, Silicon, in which he relates his experience of awakening:

The entire experience lasted perhaps one minute, and it changed me forever. My relationship with the world had always been as a separate observer perceiving the universe as outside myself and disconnected from me. What made this event astonishing was its impossible perspective because I was both the experiencer and the experience. I was simultaneously the observer of the world and the world. I was the world observing itself! I was concurrently knowing that the world is made of a substance that feels like love, and that I am that substance!

Faggin, Federico . Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness (p. 159). Waterside Productions. Kindle Edition.

That is a contemporary account - Faggin is still with us - but you find similar accounts going back to the Upaniṣads. If you google the union of knower and known, the returned pages are all connected to this theme.

Do you believe that the human race is capable of creating a social/political system that is benevolent to the vast majority of people it represents and can maintain and preserve the ecology it exists within? — universeness

I hope that democratic systems of government can aspire to that. I don't know what the alternatives are.

As regards the civil war - it's astonishing, and saddening, that it even occurred. America seems to have kind of streak of violence deeply embedded in it. As for 'survival of the fittest' America's capitalist laissez faire culture certainly seems to encourage that. I've sometimes wondered if the idea of the 'pursuit of happiness' has some share of responsibility for that as it's a very individualistic aim - the idea of the 'commonwealth' never seems to have taken root there.

I don't think stupidity is an excuse for anything, especially the kind of wilful stupidity exhibited by many politicians.

I have a few American friends who make statements like 'the civil war has never really ended' and 'the rule of 'survival of the fittest,' guides 'the American dream.' Do you agree with such statements? — universeness

Not an argument I’d want to entertain. I still hold out hope that sanity will prevail and that not all Republicans are delusional and mendacious.The big problem in America is ‘empowered stupidity’ - for various reasons stupid people have far too much influence in the US. The Australian electorate on the whole is much more sane.

thanks! Helps me to understand where you’re coming from.

If you can possibly focus on the issue rather than adopting your usual pose of juvenile hysteria, what I’m asking is, is there a political solution to the problem? Granted the role of politics is to serve the interests of the populace - to focus on the living conditions of the electorate - then what political party or movement or ideology offers a solution to what you see as the problem? As you say the Democrats are complicit in Trump’s corruption, then what has to happen to provide an alternative solution?

So is there anything short of total revolution that will address the problem? I mean, what would a solution consist of? Do you think if the current order completely broke down and anarchy prevailed, it would make it easier for those suffering masses to pay their rent and get along?

So I take it that you think the solution to the political problem posed by Trump is outside of politics. Do you think there is any solution possible?

I wrote a response to your comment which for some reason was queued for moderation, I'll wait and see if it appears in due course. (I have a feeling it was a software glitch.)

(I'm also a layman, I don't consider myself expert about Kant (or anything) but I acknowledge this is a difficult subject. )

I looked into the word 'noumenal' - it is derived from that seminal Greek word, nous, which I often remark, has fallen into disuse, and for which there is really no modern equivalent (outside specialised philosophy departments). So 'noumenal' means literally 'an object of nous', meaning, something that can be understood as a pure concept without reference to a physical instance. It's very close in meaning to the eidos of Platonism. However Kant seems to have overlooked that derivation, which is commented on by Schopenhauer:

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.

I think Schopenhauer is right about that, and that it's an unfortunate oversight or lack in Kant's writings. (It's also easily confused with another philosophical term, 'numinous', which means something like 'the idea of the holy' but has a completely separate etymology.)

(I say this because I'm trying to understand the subtleties of Aquinas' theory of knowledge, in which the intellect, nous, appropriates the forms of things by a process of assimilation as per this blog post. The idea that the soul/psyche/intellect 'becomes one' or is united with the object of knowledge has ancient provenance.)

So, in short, imagine if there was a jury trial of Trump, for conspiracy or secession or some other charge, and for some reason, he was acquitted (again) or found not guilty on a technicality, or whatever. You can bet that the Trump enablers and the GOP would forever use this to declare Trump innocent of trying to steal the election, despite all the facts, all the evidence. Because, remember, in Trump World, the facts don't count.

Quick question about Kant. His Transcendental Idealism seems to be based on epistemological grounds, right? In other words, he says there is a reality out there (noumena) but we do not know it, or have access to it and we perceive a world constructed by mentation, that is generated through noumena, but not necessarily like it at all (clumsy wording, I know) — Tom Storm

Very perceptive question. His Critique was, after all, the critique of reason, pure and practical, so the concern was primarily with what we can know. (Do note the implied dichotomy or division between 'in the mind' and 'really existing'. It haunts all of these debates.)

Kant has been criticized heavily for the 'ding an sich' (thing in itself) and noumena - the terms are not actually the same although they overlap considerably. I understand the argument about ding an sich to be saying, we can only know things as they appear to us, our knowledge of them is conditional upon that. As Emarys Westacott says, quite rightly in my view, 'a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.' And I think that sense of the unknown, and the corollary of the inherently limited nature of what we know, is fundamental to understanding Kant. It's not exactly scepticism, but it's also not unqualified realism.

I don't see Kant as an indirect realist, because (unlike Locke) he doesn't posit ideas as representations. But his transcendental idealism is very elusive, hardly anyone seems to grasp it - the usual response is nearly always that he (and all idealists) are saying that the world is 'merely' or 'only' 'in the mind'. The whole problem with that analysis, is that it imagines it is seeing the whole panorama from an external viewpoint, or imagining what the world would be, without any perspective or point of view. Whereas that is precisely what can't be done.

When you have one side operating outside the law, while the opposing party is constrained to act within it, then the opposing party’s ability to prosecute is severely curtailed. I too am very disappointed by the apparent lack of action on the DOJ’s part, but It’s not simply weakness on the Democrat side - they’re up against an extra-legal power that has enormous influence over the media and public opinion. (I say extra-legal, because it’s obvious that a significant proportion of the US populace really does believe that Trump is above the law. In effect, Trump has convinced a large section of the electorate that the truth is what he says it is - which amounts to the same.)

Think back to the Mueller Report. Mueller has been castigated for his perceived weakness, but what he actually said, or strongly implied, was that there were grounds for impeachment, but that Congress needed to make that determination. And how did that play out?

We have a coterie of people in positions of power in Government, who’ve already shown time and time again that they will acquit Trump, no matter the charges, no matter the evidence. If it were the Republican Party of 1970 then it’s quite feasible Trump would have been impeached, expelled and disgraced after the Mueller report, but that didn’t happen. I remember it being said at the time of the first impeachment, if you’re going to go after the King, you have to make sure the blow is fatal. It wasn’t, and it could easily happen all over again. So, no, I don’t hold the Democrats responsible for this situation, the fault is wholly and solely with the Republican Party, aided and abetted by Rupert Murdoch.

think the vital question now is, why is the Democratic party so utterly impotent in the face of the outrageous criminality of the Republicans? — hypericin

It can’t be laid at their feet. Who acquitted Trump twice already? Who are propagating Trump’s lies throughout the electorate and media? The Republicans are signing on to all manner of nonsense conspiracy theories. The Democrats are doing everything they can but the situation is diabolical.

One difference with Watergate is that at least some congressmen and senators on the same side as Nixon decided that the principle of fairness was more important than party. — schopenhauer1

Just saw the excellent dramatisation of Watergate, 'Gaslit'. Recommend it. The GOP of the day still had some principles, they hadn't all sold their soul for power.

totally agree with you. I live in Aus but my son is perm. resident in US, I now have two American grand-children. Trump has succeeded in poisoning a large part of the electorate by, in that creature Stephen Bannon's words, 'flooding the zone with shit'. It's all appalling, but one of the many appalling things about it is the GOP is not even bothering to push back much against the Jan 6 commission, reckoning that their voters don't really give a shit about it, and they'll coast into power in November on the back of the parlous economic situation and dismantle and bury the whole show. Which they might.

“If you talk to a chemist, “real” is a molecule, an atom, a proton. To a physicist, “real” is a quark, a Higgs boson, or maybe a collection of little strings vibrating in eleven dimensions. — Joshs

They're all still gestalts - ordered wholes situated in a conceptual scheme. You never see an actual proton, and the experimental confirmation of their existence retains an element of ambiguity (manifesting as uncertainty or the wave-particle duality). The shattering insight of 20th c physics is that they too do not have absolute (i.e. context-independent) existence. The Copenhagen Interpretation is mainly about learning how to live with that.

In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth - quite the contrary. — Davidson

Idealism in my interpretation does not undermine objectivity. It situates objectivity in a larger context - but with the understanding that objectivity does not reveal philosophical absolutes. But in practical matters, objectivity is of unquestionable importance - in judges, historians, scientists, and many other occupations. However objectivity is not absolute - there is not some final way that everything is, some ultimate, objective truth (supported again by recent science) . But that doesn't imply a collapse into complete relativism either. It's not an all-or-nothing affair. Scientific and logical laws still hold for all practical purposes. Even if the world is 'appearance only' it does not conform to my subjective whims and requirements.

Yeah that’s it, well done to find it. Snow Leopard: ‘What “laws of physics? :brow: ‘

Wouldn't/shouldn't Buddhists take the middle path? — Agent Smith

Doesn't the whole idea of karma presuppose free will? Here's an article on it https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/karma.html

Does this simple quantum example defend the idea of free will? That things aren't certain even in the short run? — TiredThinker

I think so! I've always believed that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle slayed LaPlace's Daemon.

Yes, I heard that. They also adopt a pose - legs spread out to kind of parachute them a little.

Actually it reminds me, there’s a Curiosity Stream feature on The Big Cats, one episode of which concerned the Himalayan Snow Leopard. It was amazing footage to begin with, considering how scarce those creatures are. But one sequence has a snow leopard charging an ibex on the edge of a mountain and then both tumbling about 70 metres through the air before landing - admittedly on a slight slope with snow covering, which cushioned the fall. The cat then finishes the ibex with the killer bite to the throat and stashes the cadaver in a crevice and saunters off. And the amazing thing is, they play the footage of the fall in slo-mo, and the cat actually changes its grip on the ibex while falling. Actually the most sensational wildlife footage I think I’ve ever seen, Attenborough included.

Amazing creatures, cats.

I suppose that is a form of compatibillism?

I am not sure I understand how one is supposed to access or understand 'pure ideas' such as truth or beauty in order to appreciate them in our reality. — Tom Storm

I understand your perplexity and, I think, what you’re asking for. I have another of my stock quotes from an essay which I’ve found very valuable in this respect.

A genuine (scholastic) realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom — Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West

The problem is, the West parted ways with this understanding so long ago that we’ve forgotten what it means - as that passage says. But reflect on the commonly held belief that life arose by chance and that we ourselves are the outcome of chance, marooned in a Universe which has no intrinsic reason. It’s difficult to reflect on, because of its taken-for-grantedness. As Buddhologist David Loy says, ‘ The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed.’ And that is a consequence of the transition to modernity. Modernity (and post-modernity) has many strengths, and besides it’s an inevitable and unstoppable development, but this is an aspect of it that has to be questioned.