Life is meaningless and why that's a good thing.

[Angrboda]

There is a deficit in the account of determinism.  Yes, in the face of complete information, things may be determined.  However, we have incomplete information about ourselves and the environment, which makes our behavior as agents somewhat indeterminate, at least from the perspective of the thing that we are, a consciousness inside a brain.

That's what I mean about being on different pages, speaking different languages, and/or in this case, what looks like speaking at different levels. I'll try and answer, for a while at least, but I think we'll probably just end up talking past each other. Firstly, do you disagree with any of those four numbered points I made to Boru? Because to me that's what it all boils down to, that our brain is a physical machine following physical laws and therefore determined, as I described, and if you agree that consciousness directly correlates with the brain in whatever sense, then I personally don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that it is not determined too.

But at a different level, from the POV of our consciousness, I'm not personally talking about what we know or don't know from our conscious perspective. Our experience, whatever it is, however indeterminate it feels is nonetheless the product of determined physical processes in the brain, moment to moment, in my view. The fact that we are in an uncertain position from a conscious POV, makes no difference to that as far as I can see. Granted I accept that that's a materialistic point of view, that puts the physical brain first rather than consciousness, and lots of people disagree with that, coming perhaps from a more "idealistic/idealism" POV that puts consciousness first, but that's just not me. Do you basically not agree at all with my 'tick tock' logic?

The main problem with that is we don't have any access to the tick, tock of nature; the only thing we can ever have is the positional viewpoint of a consciousness that is limited by nature and perpetually in possession of inadequate information. We cannot know what a brick is in itself; we can only know how our consciousness appears to be perturbed by the perception and experience of a brick. It's all well and good to say that objective reality is determined, but the fact of our inability to access such a reality in itself makes a liar of us for doing so. We can have, and only have, the subjective reality inside consciousness. You may indulge yourself in believing that your consciousness is a product of your physical brain, but you can never know with any certainty that it is. The embeddedness of a mind inside a reality that is within the mind of a god would provide us with the same evidence, and the same experience, that your hypothesized brain-hosted consciousness does. If there is no specific reason to embrace your chosen narrative over others that are equally parsimonious, then you are doing so for emotional or subjective reasons, and that makes it a logical error.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that alot of god believing types would be extremely disturbed by the idea of a god that went to such lengths to fool us. It would also seem to diminish said god if it didn't (or couldn't) make (or act in) an actual physical reality. It's definitely a problem for the "greatest conceivable being" line of ideation....if all we have to do to conceive of a greater being is imagine one that makes a physical world matching their mental one.

In all of this, I don't think it's strictly true that the mind of a god alternative is equally parsimonious. Wouldn't the simplest and most efficient explanation be that things are more or less as they seem regardless of whether or not gods exist? Wouldn't it be the simplest and most efficient explanation...even if it were false, and this was all an elaborate ruse in the mind of a god....?

[emjay]

That's what I mean about being on different pages, speaking different languages, and/or in this case, what looks like speaking at different levels. I'll try and answer, for a while at least, but I think we'll probably just end up talking past each other. Firstly, do you disagree with any of those four numbered points I made to Boru? Because to me that's what it all boils down to, that our brain is a physical machine following physical laws and therefore determined, as I described, and if you agree that consciousness directly correlates with the brain in whatever sense, then I personally don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that it is not determined too.

But at a different level, from the POV of our consciousness, I'm not personally talking about what we know or don't know from our conscious perspective. Our experience, whatever it is, however indeterminate it feels is nonetheless the product of determined physical processes in the brain, moment to moment, in my view. The fact that we are in an uncertain position from a conscious POV, makes no difference to that as far as I can see. Granted I accept that that's a materialistic point of view, that puts the physical brain first rather than consciousness, and lots of people disagree with that, coming perhaps from a more "idealistic/idealism" POV that puts consciousness first, but that's just not me. Do you basically not agree at all with my 'tick tock' logic?

The main problem with that is we don't have any access to the tick, tock of nature; the only thing we can ever have is the positional viewpoint of a consciousness that is limited by nature and perpetually in possession of inadequate information.  We cannot know what a brick is in itself; we can only know how our consciousness appears to be perturbed by the perception and experience of a brick.  It's all well and good to say that objective reality is determined, but the fact of our inability to access such a reality in itself makes a liar of us for doing so.  We can have, and only have, the subjective reality inside consciousness.  You may indulge yourself in believing that your consciousness is a product of your physical brain, but you can never know with any certainty that it is.  The embeddedness of a mind inside a reality that is within the mind of a god would provide us with the same evidence, and the same experience, that your hypothesized brain-hosted consciousness does.  If there is no specific reason to embrace your chosen narrative over others that are equally parsimonious, then you are doing so for emotional or subjective reasons, and that makes it a logical error.

I can definitely agree with the second half of this paragraph, in that I accept it's impossible to be certain about this, and that's an interesting way of furthering that point. But I still don't hugely understand the first part of the paragraph, if what you're talking about is something to do with fatalism, if that's the right word... but that could be a misunderstanding on my part, making wrong assumptions. Ie determinism doesn't mean to me that we have a fixed future that cannot be changed if we knew about it... ie to me determinism is only useful for talking about the past, not the future... there's no way we can know what the future is, and if we did know, in the sense of having a fatalism based prophecy of the future, then that just leads to all sorts of paradoxes, that I haven't been able to resolve... but it seems from that point of view, you could always change it... so it's not fatalism I'm talking about with my views on determinism, but only past based determinism. I don't know if that's where you were going with the first part of your paragraph, but probably best to get the assumptions I'm making about that out of the way first.