Agrippan Skepticism (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, December 26, 2011, 20:34 (4515 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,

You ask to what end a psychic explanation serves the purpose of gathering knowledge, and “how we can meaningfully assimilate them [the stories].” Every quest for knowledge entails collecting the available information and assimilating it in a pattern that will gain general consensus as being true. This is an ongoing process. At present there is no consensus, i.e. no knowledge as to the source of consciousness. Materialists think the source is the brain cells, but millions of people think the source is some form of energy which CONTROLS the brain cells – they equate it with “mind” or “soul” or spirit” or “will”. At present we only have belief (see the above definitions). Knowledge will need to explain experiences (e.g. the shoe on the roof) which appear to defy the materialist theory. Until they have been explained, they can be meaningfully assimilated as POSSIBLE evidence of an unknown form of energy, and you will only exclude them if you’ve already made up your mind that the source of consciousness, emotion, memory, imagination, will etc. is the brain cells. If you can’t explain these cases, my suggestion is that you suspend judgement, and that does not allow for exclusion of ANY possible evidence for either theory.

You send me down an interesting rabbit hole here...

I can only comment upon my own experience, but my time spent meditating leads me to the fact that I truly feel we have very little control: Spend even 15 minutes meditating and you seek how easily your mind "gets away from you." It is this idea that leads a philosopher like Daniel Dennett to claim that free will is false: that what "will" really *is* is so minuscule as to be practically nonexistent.

Basically the "will" is a filter that allows actions to pass. It has no control over them beyond negation. Dennett's view here is because the will only acts as a gatekeeper to our unconscious, then free will effectively doesn't exist.

I'm not completely on board with him here: yes, we do not have control over what our subconscious brings to the surface, but we do have control over what we will act on... the very fact that we have that "executive function" as it were is evidence of free will to me, even if it is an extremely limited free will as opposed to the traditional western notion of the term.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"