[The One and Only...]

Originally Posted by ArtificialBrandon

You're a real piece of work, aren't you?

Yes.

You claim to be a materialist, yet you also claim to be a radically doubting rationalist.

Just because reality is material does not mean that we know what those material things are.

Also remember that I am arguing on the point of PRACTICALITY here, accepting several of the established "axioms".

"EMPIRICISM IS MORONIC BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW WHAT REALITY IS...
...BUT I HAVE PEDANTIC OPINIONS ABOUT THE MATERIAL WORLD ANYWAY."

In pure theory, I deny that there must be a reality to begin with. But for the purposes of this argument, I have to assume certain things.

All of a sudden you're on the side of science, are you? Well now, your challenge is to prove what causes what: does consciousness cause the chemical reactions, or do the chemical reactions cause states of consciousness?

Chemical reactions cause consciousness. To think otherwise would invoke the problems of mind-matter dualism.

Remember, I am operating on pseudo-practical terms now.

If the future is written out for us, we have no free will, Mr. Logic. Compatabalism doesn't mean accepting the extreme, contradictory stances of determinist and free will camps--it means synthesizing them.

You have a narrow view of compatabalism.

Originally Posted by theapportioner

If this were true, you would find inheritance patterns in families. Now, does this make any sense whatsoever in the context of the nun who does not desire to look cool??? Or the child of an irresponsible alcoholic father, who takes on a fatherlike role in the household, and becomes 'good person' whose desires are not the same as the fathers? Or a firstborn son who desires to be a president, and a 2nd son who would rather rebel?? Your idea of genetic determinism is hopelessly out of date.

Sure it does. The science of genetics has not been perfectly figured out yet, and there are always the factors of mutation. Not every gene can be written in a four-box Punnett square.

Futhermore, you forget that the desires themselves are not so important here; rather, what fulfills them is.

A bird gets out of the way of torrential rain, too. Just as a bird isn't 'logically determining' anything, you too are 'logically determining' nothing. Learned experience, habit, desire, instinct etc. do not equal reason. That you put your book in your backpack is an arational action, almost a reflex like scratching an itch or biting ones' nails when nervous. Sure you can 'rationalize' these too but only by thinking about it, using language to understand why. Unless again, you want to subsume all of this into reason - but then it becomes a semantic issue and the word 'reason' has many relevant meanings that would be rendered diluted by this act.

But reason is defined as thought, and I did, in fact, have to think about putting my book into my backpack. So my point remains.