Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I would go further than James. Holding dear the prospect of future annihilation leads inexorably to existential nihilism. Ontological naturalism destroys all identity, semiotic meaning, and appeal to rationality. This leaves its adherents living a self-constructed fantasy contrary to what they actually believe true.

You have never once been able to demonstrate that.

Not to you because you live in the self-constructed fantasy. You say you don't have free will, but live as if you do. You claim that human intelligence is an evolved biological feature but live as if your reasoning has independent veracity. You live as if your life has meaning then turn around and say that people are biological robots. If you are an ontological naturalist and believe all that that entails then you are living a lie. That's the hard truth, Esquilax. Sorry to hear that you cannot accept it.

[Mudhammam]

You have never once been able to demonstrate that.

Not to you because you live in the self-constructed fantasy. You say you don't have free will, but live as if you do.

Free will is really separate discussion altogether; by the same token, Chad, you live as if the floor beneath your feet is solid when in in fact it is comprised mostly of empty space. The point being, yeah, so what? From our perception, we are free so long as the external and internal forces that define us (our environment and biology) are not imposed upon by another whose intricate and innumerable parts consist of like forces.

[Esquilax]

Not to you because you live in the self-constructed fantasy. You say you don't have free will, but live as if you do.

If my not having a thing is indistinguishable, in my day to day lived experience, from having it, then I see no particular issue with this.

Incidentally, as I've said before, you "if you reduce the mind to materialism then all you are is neurons!" guys are missing something, and that's that consciousness, free will, all of that, could be an emergent process that arises in sufficiently complex meat brains. There's nothing specifically about naturalism or materialism that precludes free will, despite you presumptuous theists feeling like you can just claim ownership of the whole shebang by fiat, and given that the whole area of consciousness isn't fully understood yet I'm more than happy to simply say I don't know and not worry about the lofty huffing of folks like you who feel that the mind simply belongs to them because they say so.

You claim that human intelligence is an evolved biological feature but live as if your reasoning has independent veracity.

Have we met? If not, how on earth can you claim this?

Oh, and just saying, I'm well aware that my reasoning, senses and so on can be fooled or wrong, because I'm aware of the circumstances under which my brain evolved. I acknowledge fully the cognitive biases, heuristics and blunders in reasoning common to humanity and try my hardest to avoid them; are you saying here that you don't even accept that those even exist, because you think your brain was specially created?

You live as if your life has meaning then turn around and say that people are biological robots.

Still an awful lot of assumptions about me, here. Are you willing to come on record and state categorically that a robot can never have consciousness or free will? How do you intend to demonstrate that? Because so far, all I've seen you do is make a bunch of intuitive leaps based on magic presuppositions that you haven't even attempted to support. "I believe I have a soul that does X, Y and Z, and therefore if you think you don't have a soul then you're not allowed to think you have X, Y and Z," isn't a compelling argument until you can demonstrate the existence of a soul and a method for how it generates X, Y and Z, but you're content with not even defining what this special quality is.

If you are an ontological naturalist and believe all that that entails then you are living a lie. That's the hard truth, Esquilax. Sorry to hear that you cannot accept it.

Sorry to hear that you think your presuppositions count as binding objective truth for everyone else. Please do come back when you're willing to accept that not everyone is required to live in your fantasy land just because you want them to.

Oh, and also? This is exactly what I was talking about earlier: it's really unsettling seeing how much effort a certain stripe of theist puts into trying to make the lives of his fellow human beings worse. Because even if we accept what you're arguing here, you're not providing any positive proof of your alternative, you're just tossing an appeal to consequences fallacy at us, meaning that we'd have no reason to accept your creation nonsense even if you did convince us of the uselessness of a materialist life, so all your current "argument" would do, even if it's successful, is trap us in nihilistic fatalism. Why is that appealing to you? Are you truly that mean spirited?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Esquilax, your on-going duplicity is becoming a paradoy of itself. You've argued on behalf of all the positions I mentioned and then act like I haven't been paying attention.

A robot, whose functions are based on macroscopic mechanical processes, will not have consciousness or freewill. I will revisit the problem when presented with such a robot that actually seems to have either of those. Since the 1980's that's aways been about 10 years away. I'm still waiting.

[Esquilax]

Esquilax, your on-going duplicity is becoming a paradoy of itself. You've argued on behalf of all the positions I mentioned and then act like I haven't been paying attention.

Though I've argued for my own position, which includes some tenets of what you describe, I see no connection between the position you've laid out and the consequences you claim it has. Given that your argument appears to be no more than the assertion that this position has those consequences, I'm under no obligation to take it at all seriously.

Additionally, if my position doesn't match what it did in the past, consider that I'm capable of a little thing called "learning," and evolving my position as new information and consideration arises. I don't feel any particular shame in changing my mind on certain issues, and I'm wondering why you think I should.

A robot, whose functions are based on macroscopic mechanical processes, will not have consciousness or freewill.

I don't find that bald assertion particularly compelling. Right now, it's little more than a non sequitur. As I said before, we don't have a particularly comprehensive grasp on how consciousness functions, so you hardly have anything to base this claim on, regardless of how strenuously you wish to repeat it.

I will revisit the problem when presented with such a robot that actually seems to have either of those. Since the 1980's that's aways been about 10 years away. I'm still waiting.

Right, so you make a positive claim and then shift the burden of proof onto others, gotcha. Your position is ridiculous, and you are overstressing it outrageously.

Why are you so afraid of simply admitting that you don't know yet?

[The Grand Nudger]

Life ends, inexorably - possibly in a shameful manner, so what?. It's not exactly souring my milk.

[bennyboy]

And us old bastards use our dicks for pissing with these days!

You can still piss? I should be so lucky!

[LostLocke]

The way I see it, is it's like a movie.

When I go into the theater, I know that the movie is going to end in ~2 hours, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
But I don't sit there the entire time worrying about how close to the end of the show we are. I enjoy the movie as I'm watching it. And if was a particularly good movie, when the end credits start to roll, sure I'll be a bit sad that it's over, but I'll be much more happy by the mere fact that I got to sit there and watch it.

[Mudhammam]

A robot, whose functions are based on macroscopic mechanical processes, will not have consciousness or freewill.

A statement obviously contradicted by our modern understanding of human nature as it relates to seemingly universal, mechanical laws of motion. The difficulty is not accepting that this state of affairs exists, but in filling the gaps by which it has come to be the case.

[Goosebump]

Forgive me for being thick, but I do not understand what the statement is stating.