Everything is the Same

Everything is the same

A quark

An atom

A molecule

A Cell

A leaf 

An animal

A thought

A word

A subjective consciousness

All are made from the same building blocks - fundamental particles. Nothing was intended or planned. It just happened as it had to.

The way things began determined the way things are, and the way things are, determines the way things will be. Moment by moment. Our evolved programming prevents us from living this deep truth we have discovered. We live as we must, believing in free will and choice - even though we have discovered it isn't true. Our instinctive inability to live it, and believe it, gives us the joy and freedom of life. 

The Meaning

The whole meaning of life is based on choosing and enjoying the best possible experiences for ourselves and others. When achieved, this brings satisfaction and happiness, and when not achieved brings frustration and disappointment.

This approach is how we think and plan but, in reality, there is no choosing or achievement or failure to achieve, only determined events. Even this wrong free choice way of looking at life is totally determined. It was determined by evolution as a survival strategy. A process whereby self replicating molecules create the most number of copies of themselves. This is the problem of us being one thing and thinking we are another. 

The Determined Life

The determined life is just as enjoyable as the undetermined life.

In fact there is only enjoyment in the determined life because that is all there is. An undetermined life is an idea that some of us are determined to have. 

Can Thought be True?

The self-refuting nature of determinism is about the refutation of rational thought by determinism itself. How could a determined thought be lucky enough to be rationally true? If a thought is not constructed by individual logic, where is the rationality?

If a determined thought is constructed by previous thoughts and ideas, could this be a rational process as well as a determined process?

Can one determine thought lead to another determined thought in a process that is consistent and logical? 

Can anything be determined and also follow some other reasoning goals such as truth or meaning?

Thought may be out of the human beings' hands but still follow a path determined by natural laws of physics. But why would physical laws have an interest in logical or truthful thought or gaining knowledge?

This is a huge question - but it also has to be a determined one!

Just Particles  Talking

Determinism means that since the big bang particles have obeyed the laws of physics and ended up in bodies like ours, doing things like thinking and talking and moving.

There was the big bang, particles, momentum, direction etc.. It was all put in place at that moment and the rest had to happen - has happened. Nothing else was needed on the way to here and now.

But some things like thinking, talking, acting with a goal etc., have a purpose or function that was not around at the Big Bang.

How could such a dumb chaotic explosion have such intelligent intricate abilities embedded in it in the first instant? 

You could say they weren't actually embedded there, that's just where things lead. Given the pattern and arrangement of the initial universe particles bounced around in the physical way they had to, and gradually created their own influences. Which were really just the same physical laws at work. For instance they formed atoms then the atoms found Themselves forming molecules, then molecules, due to the developing physical conditions, found themselves forming DNA which equals life. DNA was shaped by natural selection and natural physical determined process to form bodies, brains, consciousness, thinking and communication by talking.

Given the exact same starting conditions, the Big Bang, with the same subatomic random quantum events, the exact same universe and world would arise. Nothing extra did ever influence the original particles, just their own interactions.

When I say it feels like I am a person with free will, and I believe I can make choices in the world, that is just particles talking.

The feelings and beliefs are particles and particles lead to the choices made and concepts believed. The particles are the world, and they are determined by already existing physical laws. 

Guilt and Pride

Guilt:

Given the deterministic nature of our existence, there is no need for guilt, or at least you might think so. If all that I do is determined then I'm not really responsible, I only feel that I am. Yet the feeling of responsibility is also determined and so my guilt is determined. But the benefit is that I now have an occasional relief when I understand the truth of my feeling guilty. Yet even that temporary understanding, and occasion or relief, is determined. I am not doing anything, I am already done. Guilt is not necessary but it is.

Pride:

Sometimes I succeed after making all the right decisions. it feels great, and I want to share my joy and my self confidence with others. I want to teach them to do what I did so they can benefit from my wisdom. But this too is all determined by universal events. I am a result of everything, not a cause. I may carry on being successful and someone else carries on failing, but that is only something happening to me, or them, and nothing to be proud or ashamed of. When I strut around giving advice I can't help myself, as this also is totally determined, so now that I know what can I do? Let's see here I go!

Blame:

The  world is full of idiots and I get great satisfaction when the ones I dislike cop what they deserve. It's not so much justice in a legal sense that I'm after, but just the particular feeling that they were rotters according to me, and they got punished or got sprung or received pain.

I know no one can help what they do because everything is determined and so blame and hate are false and unworthy emotions, but because everything is determined so is my blaming. So I can't help it. But now knowing about determinism does provide two ways of easing the bad habit of blaming. One is to not worry about changing, and let the blame be. The other is to see the pointlessness of blaming others who can't help what they are doing. It's called forgiveness. A third way is to remain totally engaged in the blame game and let it eat me away. I could pretend to choose the best option but I would be putting the cart before the horse because determinism has already taken care of everything. 

Love etc

Love, joy and happiness are some of the most positive emotions. I find it hard to imagine the hormones and the neurotransmitters when those states occur and I am naturally willing to be overwhelmed. Why not? That's the evolved “purpose” of emotions. Mother nature rewards creatures when good things have occurred and revs them up to seek more. I am stuck with my personality and my environment and my day, but having come to understand the science of life I have found a deep independent happiness. It's love because the world and the universe and everyone in it are forgiven. I understand there is no judge, no jury, and no expectation. Everyone is doing their best with what they are given. I still react to nearly everything but I have glimpsed the illusion, and part of me is always observing from a great distance. Sometimes I see the illusion close up and feel so totally content to have found a genuine truth. 

This truth may not have been what I wanted and that's what makes it very elusive. But perseverance leads to understanding and surrender. Truth is love. All is forgiven because it has to be like it is. No one is failing or wrong. The one cause set everything in motion and we are the result. Love is the feeling of this understanding. 

Truth or Illusion

Even though you understand determinism as the reality, the illusion of you can enjoy both that understanding as a truth, as well as the illusion of a personal identity living a personal life. Both can be, and are, experienced. But which is real?

In a sense neither are, because both those perspectives are experienced by the illusory subject. Without the illusory subject (me or you), there is only the unexperienced universe, which is what is experienced in a deep sleep or anesthetic. Nothing in other words. The universe is still there but nothing or no one knows it. But once evolution evolved personal awareness, and subjectivity, experience appeared. Vivid, personal awareness experience, like now! And this subjective experience is all there is. It's understandable that it believes in its own desires, feelings, fears and instincts, but less understandable that it could believe in its own discovery of a larger truth. The truth that it's belief in its own free will, and ability to affect the world around it, is an illusion. An illusion created by the evolution of DNA over millions of years.

It is both an illusory experience, and an illusory experience that has hit upon the truth.

So you may ask: what part of an illusory experience can be trusted? What part can be real?

Good question!

But that is where we are, and there is plenty of evidence that a truth has been discovered by an illusion! 

The Strange Connection

The real challenge is to somehow connect the behavior of determined particles and atoms, to the behavior of humans, including feelings, emotions, communication, thinking and interactions in society.

There must be a long, long, yet direct and physically determined connection through the processes of the laws of nature, evolution and natural selection that lead all the way to this current state of the world and the universe, including consciousness and subjective experience. 

Science points to the fact that at no time did purpose or meaning or planning or goals come into it. It all just happened how it had to. But the human experience is all about self and society and family etc., and this masks the truth that all actions and events are purely physical in nature and follow one another like clockwork.

The reason you think a certain thought, is not because you freely pondered about things, and came up with it. the reason for a thought is the physics leading up to it.

Thoughts (and subjective experience) seem very personal, and under individual control, and a matter of choice, but they aren't! They are purely the result of atomic particles behaving in a determined way since the universe began.

Some particles interacted in a way that lead to the formation of DNA, and humans, and orchestras and song and dance. 

There is no difference in similar fundamental particles, or the atoms of a particular element. Some end up in stars, or planets, or humans. 

No Plan or Goal

Objects and consciousness were determined by physical laws acting on matter. But they didn't just pop into place. Planets formed due to gravitational force. Humans evolved due to biochemical processes. There is no plan or goal, but an unfolding process that has that appearance. How could the present situation in my lounge room have been decided at the beginning of the universe, before the faintest glimpse of a future with planets, people and consciousness? This is what determination demands. It's not that the universe unfolds randomly, it doesn't, it unfolds according to physical laws. When the first self replicating molecule occurs due to the right conditions transpiring, then that molecule does replicate, and natural selection, which is also physical law in action, evolves plants, animals and consciousness over eons of time.

The laws were always in place, as were the particles, and they interact in a way that produces this present universe. 

Some things (like us), evolved communication and thinking and applying knowledge to solve problems.

We talk to one another in a way that looks free and undetermined, but is actually similar to molecules of DNA and RNA communicating to produce various proteins. Humans appear to have choice in how and what they communicate. But thinking, talking and responding, although extremely complex can be seen as purely input output information that is determined by biological programming and the present environment. Including the input/output information by language, which is information transmitted and received by sound waves or symbols. 

It's possible to acknowledge that the actual process of speaking and hearing and information processing is determined. But what about the content itself? How and why would the conversation  be about a news story on a TV set? How did it get that far from just particles bouncing around? How did it get that organized and complicated? And so much like the biological robots (humans) exert free will, and have their own agency to cause events in the world.

This Site 

This site does not attempt to prove or describe theories of physics or evolution or natural selection or biology. This work has been done and is available in many forms for the layperson. 

Once seen as true, and accepted, the consequences of a determined universe become apparent.  Some consequences fit perfectly with human reasoning and logic, while others at totally unintuitive. At first it may only be possible to understand determinism in a theoretical way, but to some degree there is also the chance to experience ourselves and the universe as it really is if this is what is determined. 

Definition

There is only one type of determinism, and that's where the whole universe is determined by physical laws.

There is only physical matter in nature. Everything is natural. There is nothing supernatural. Everything is governed by the laws of physics and thus all physical behavior of matter is determined. 

Determinism is more than a philosophy it is a fact revealed by science. 

Once you understand that determinism is true you are committed to all the strange and unintuitive consequences that define the truth of our existence. This website describes these consequences. 

Bare Bones 

The bare-bones truth of determinism or physical law is simple, logical, and can be experienced in a nutshell.

Philosophy is fine but can cause confusion, lack of focus, blurring the simple truth, and cannot be held in the mind like the simple principle of physical determinism, ready to be remembered or applied to your world view.

Intuitive feelings and beliefs can form around the central core of determinism. This gives a more personal experience of truth, a personal discovery, rather than philosophical theories applied from others. 

Me Versus the Universe

There is my mind, apparently. Everything I experience and know occurs there. And it always occurs there only now, in the present moment. Even if it’s a thought about the past.

I did not build my mind (brain), nor did I create any of the input from the outside world that shaped it, from childhood till now. I do, however, think I create my own output back into the world, including as my own thoughts.

But in actual fact, my thoughts and actions are a response to things, not a cause of things. It’s input/output just like any other computer. 

Evolution has created a very, very strong feeling of personal subjective experience and agency in human brains as a result of natural selection.

But that doesn’t make it a real thing. Robotic type input/output does it all with subjective experience being part of the process. And even the identifying with thoughts and feelings is an electro-chemical process rather than a “me”.  

It may be impossible to see through that overwhelming feeling of “me” but at least it can be explored and challenged logically, as well as scientifically. As we are doing here.

And again, to top it all off and to recap:

Because this whole process of the determined unfolding of the universe creates every  movement of every particle, and thus every thought, there is really no exploring anything.

Exploration does occur, but only apparently. There are also no choices or decisions in this exploration, only input/output interactions that cannot be altered.

Luckily we are determined to feel free and powerful and responsible for our lives, so it’s easy to continue living and dancing and laughing, even while exploring the sober truth.

Swirling Masses of Particles

To describe the universe as an unbelievably large quantity of determined particles is what the philosophy of determinism does. That’s what science says. 

But when it gets to you and me, and my mind, my memories and social interactions in society, that’s when it gets a bit hard to accommodate. How could my conversation with my wife while watching the world news on TV be determined?

It would need, all of it, to be determined: the thoughts, the talking, the TV and it’s pictures and sounds, the bodies sitting and breathing and each pump of the heart.

How could a determined conversation make sense? Each sentence spoken back and forth would need to be not thought about, or to make sense. How could it make sense if one sentence or idea does not bounce off the previous idea but is totally determined?

Well imagine the whole scene occurring without anyone or anything doing it. Like computers, once set up with software and linked can talk to each other in a predetermined way. They don’t think or decide, they just respond. So could it be with humans.

Social communication and interaction and the feeling of a self doing it can all be part of the determined behaviour of particles. Once you let go of the human-centric viewpoint and stand back you can see yourself and people and societies operating molecule for molecule as a whole. The people, as little nodes of consciousness, are still there apparently exercising their will, but that will is just as determined as everything else.

Every word and every synaptic electrochemical impulse happens as it must because physical laws have guided everything since the beginning of the universe. Everything is a swirling mass of particles moving forward  according to physical law.

Moment by moment the universe is obeying the laws of physics as it unfolds. Nothing influences it. It influences everything. Consciousness and self identity are its creations not yours. You, feeling like yourself, is it doing it!

Nothing is needed for the process to occur. This moment creates the next moment, atom for atom.

Extreme Determinism

This website is for those who take the scientific approach and who have done their research over time.

This site is about extreme determinism, which is the only type of determinism there is, and the only principle governing the unfolding of the universe. It is just one thing. And this world is the result.

This world plus one second is the next determined result, and so on and so on until the end of time.

The future of the world is not up for grabs. But that future may include you working very hard to change it.

Humans keep evolving: living, reproducing and thriving in biological terms. Regardless of beliefs in religion, atheism, determinism or nothing. The same as earthworms or sardines.

Folk or Science?

Why would particles have anything to do with perceiving reality? Why would communication develop between groups of particles that makes sense in terms of the physical world, logic and scientific understanding? 

Why wouldn't everything be random noise?

Everything isn't random, and logical systems of language and thought and science have developed. That has happened. 

And there are some scientific explanations of how it all happened by itself, by evolution. 

It's not why did it happen? or how did it happen? or what's the meaning of it? It's just that it did happen and we are the result. In particular, my own mind is the result and as far as my own consciousness is concerned, it is everything. There is not one thing that exists or happens that is not within my own consciousness. 

My own consciousness contains everything I perceive and experience and remember and project. 

Even the thought "there are eight billion other consciousnesses" occurs solely within the bounds of my own .

Even if someone else tells me;  "you are only one in eight billion consciousnesses," that person, as well as that spoken message, occurs totally within my own consciousness.

As far as I can perceive, figuratively and literally, there is nothing other than myself. It appears I have the ability to choose and act, but when I look logically into that, it can't be true. 

I have no agency at all. I am already happening as a result of things and there is no room for me to be a cause. 

This consciousness and all it holds is it.

Yes that is it, full stop. But the very next thought is as though that's not it. It's as though I'm back where I started. Trying to understand life, trying to control things, seeing the world as external to my internal self that decides and acts.

It's as though determinism is a silly theory only, while the folk psychology of evolutionary origin is the real truth. Yet it is the other way round according to all logic and science.  How do you deal with that dichotomy?

You deal with it in exactly the way determinism dictates. You deal with it in the precise way you are already dealing with it. You don't need to do anything different because it's already being done. Even every doubt is perfectly it! 

As you swing back and forth between determinism and free will the emphasis may slowly change.

It does!

This is life!

This is how it is every moment, and this is how it will be. Nothing can be different. You might decide to do something different but that deciding itself cannot be different. All the wobbly feelings that go with life's journey cannot be different. They may come and go but only as determined by the laws of nature. 

Genetic Programming

You are genetically programmed by evolution, to get in control of your life. But that programming is life controlling you, once more.

True Belief

When your belief is true, it will always be there. You don’t have to prop it up, it will never let you down. You won’t even have to remember it.

Luck

In a determined life, the only kind of life, everything is a matter of luck.

We are Caused

We humans are forced to blame each other for behaving as we are programmed.

There are no exceptions. You and I also are bound by our genes and bodies, and experience, to judge everyone else and ourselves for all human failings and successes. When something happens we say "oh why did he do it? how could he do that? she's a wonderful person, he's a rotter," and so on. There must be a way of viewing any incident or situation or person completely impartially. By being aware of the actions and interpretations of the doer, and the surrounding observers, and particularly the self that I am or you are in which all this interpreting occurs. 

There is this way of viewing situations impartially and that's where the search eventually takes us - we are seeking an overview that is true, but if you and I are humans then we too are doomed to bondage to the physical laws of the universe. Anything we think say or do is done by the universe itself, in exact accordance with its laws. You and I are continuous chemical reactions in operation, from beginning to end. There is no point at which we separated out as a free will subjective consciousness, that chooses or influences the future. Everything follows the laws of physical matter, which create each moment from the last. Every thought, judgmental or not, is caused by what caused us. Thinking is never free to discover, only free to obey. 

Predictability

There is no plan or future mapped out by some god or by nature. The situation of the universe now, causes the situation of the universe in the next nanosecond and so on. Each nanosecond in which the universe actually exists is also now. It is always now, even when a prediction or the past is explored - that also can only occur now! And the present now which is all there ever is, is caused by the last now. 

Determinism does not mean anyone or anything has any idea about what is determined. It just means this determines that. That being the next this. 

A particular molecule in a low pressure weather system does have its every move determined by the rest of the universe, but it doesn't follow a previously worked out plan. If everything was known about the present state of the universe it's next move could be predicted, but it's still is not following a plan, only a series of causes and effects. It is also a cause creating effects and so the whole universe moves as one. The result is the cause as it moves forward.

Every cause and effect of particle interaction is so absolutely unpredictable (by us), that we can look forward to being surprised by the future, until the end of time. Even so we will get vastly more skilled at predicting or understanding the behavior of the material world.

We will be particularly surprised by the feelings we have, the thoughts we think, the decisions that we think we choose, the behavior of others, the discoveries of human kind and the joys and agonies of life. The feeling of free will will remain with us, even though we understand there is none. We can go on living life as we know and love it, as nature intended, as it is so determined, one hundred percent.

The Mind is the Brain

The brain is electrochemical reactions, and so the 

brain/mind is determined.

Not just determined as by my childhood, or genes, or upbringing, or culture. (That is included and covered by determinism).

But also totally determined by moment to moment particle interaction. All change and movement in the brain is determined in exactly the same way as movement of all the non-living universe. Everything changing and moving together. Everything influenced by everything else in this moment, and moving to the next. Unfolding according to physical law.

Matter, bodies, brains, consciousness and subjective personal awareness. All built out of the same thing. All following the same rules. So on the one hand you have determinism of a human mind by genetic and cultural and environmental factors. And on the other hand you have determinism of the mind by the fact that all matter is being governed by the laws of physics since time immemorial.

In a way, you can even forget about the genetic and cultural factors, because these factors are also governed by physical laws from the beginning. After the universe was complete with its particles, everything from then on was determined. Genetic codes determine the body, but the genetic code is determined by particle behavior due to physical law.

Any cause after the big bang is determined. Has been already determined. Once the initial influence occurs there are no more influences.

You might say two particles colliding and bouncing away from each other is a simple determined action, while two people chatting over a meal is an incredibly complicated determined action.

Yet they are no different except in the massive amount of particles involved in two people chatting.

Each of those two events is part of an ongoing chain of determined events unfolding in a determined universe. 

Particles to Minds 

How do you get from describing fundamental particles to describing human minds? 

1. Fundamental particles do get together to form subatomic particles and atoms, they can't help it. 

2. And atoms get together to form molecules, they can't help it. It just happens.

3. Molecules join together in many combinations, including self-replicating combinations that are described as alive. They can't help it.

4. Living things evolve to form more varied and more complex organisms, with nervous systems and brains. They can't help it. It just happens due to how matter interacts. It's still just the fundamental particles.

5. And in humans, brains have evolved to become conscious with feelings and thoughts and ideas. These brains couldn't help it. 

6. And the feelings and thoughts and ideas evolved within the brain/mind software to the point where each human organism experienced a sense of personal self. And they believed they were doing  things by their own free will. This just happened as an adaptation by natural selection, and it couldn't have been otherwise. It was all particle's interacting 

These six stages in getting from describing fundamental particles to describing human minds are arbitrary . It is really one continuous process that happens if you set a universe like ours in motion.

Each of the six stages could be looked at with different fields of knowledge. From particle physics to atomic physics to molecular chemistry to organic chemistry to evolutionary biology to neuroscience.

It can also be seen as one continuous process. Particles moving. Moving as they must. Determined by physical law. Creating galaxies and whales and symphony orchestras. 

The Search

In understanding how matter life and the mind works, their appears to be lots to learn. From particle physics to biochemistry and neuroscience, there is plenty of evidence that puts us in a position to understand how life works in principle, and in detail. There is no need for non-natural forces or events. Nothing supernatural.

You can gradually get quite a hold on how evolution built us to be and act and think as we do, and it appears we are part of a mechanical process that is solely material in nature.

Eventually it becomes obvious that physical law governs all particle interactions, and that the behavior of the unfolding universe is determined. 

Evolution and our actions and thoughts, our decisions and choices, are all determined. Not just determined in some vague way from the past - that too! But determined in the present moment. Each moment determines the next and that moment determines the next and so on. There is no way to influence this determined process. It does all the influencing and if you have a thought to choose or do something, that thought is determined also. It all happens by itself, even the strong feeling and sense of self having free will to decide how to influence the world and to make things happen.

That feeling is also determined. 

The all pervading power of determinism causes everything.

How will the world change if you see and understand this? It won't! Seeing this and understanding this is determined, if it happens, and there is obviously no point in trying to figure it all out because if that happens it's also determined, along with the trying. Determinism is not discovered in the world. It's embedded in the world. Determinism comes first, second, third, and last. It's all there is.

If you want to know what your next thought should be about, just wait and see. 

So when you search for meaning or facts or explanations, what is the point if everything is determined? There is no point, you could say. or you could say the point is "I feel like I am truly doing the searching and finding answers." Once again, you start to explore possibilities, and that exploration too is determined.

So will I or won't I continue to think about it? You can't say. Or you can say "I will" or "I won't," and that once again seems pointless. 

This is what they mean when they say that the philosophy of hard determinism is self-refuting .

This is the point reached where it seems to be self-refuting to the searcher.

It's possibly a good place to pause and take stock and consider things.

It seems so easy to forget it's all already determined. The search! And the answer!

Here we go again. 

The Ultimate humility 

It appears man has brilliantly progressed in his achievement to discover what he really is. But he has really discovered he is only a robot - both body and mind. In fact man didn't discover it at all - a robot discovered that it is a robot. The feelings of consciousness, self-awareness, introspection and understanding are robotic-but just as wonderful as if they were real.

More Searching

Forget all the scientific proofs and theories of the origin of the universe, and life and consciousness, and self and culture. Forget all that, and simply comprehend that all particle behavior is determined by physical laws. Whether that's one particle on its own in space, or trillions of particles in a rock, or forming a complex organism like ourselves.

All the behaviors of these particles are determined, in the present moment, and in all the preceding moments and in all future moments. Forget our own needs and desires and decisions and actions. All of those are included in the determined behavior of particles. The big question from this scenario is: how do you get from matter reacting according to physics, to matter thinking and talking, and matter discovering what it itself is, and what the universe is, and writing books and making films about itself? What changes so that matter goes from just particles to something that knows things and decides to do things and then does them?

Does anything change at all? science cannot find any difference between live matter and dead matter only in the arrangements of the particles not the particles themselves

People thinking and talking and discovering things seems such an unlikely scenario for matter to carry out. Yet given our knowledge of the formation and evolution of life and consciousness, it's possible to understand technically how this has happened.

Evolution has selected for and shaped matter into being conscious and talking and knowing, but evolution itself is also just the way particles interact in the way they must. 

Evolution is not something separate and special in the universe it just happens. It is particles obeying the laws of physics. There is, and always was, only particles and determinism. Deterministic laws

It would all be clearer (and maybe it's possible) that you could look at the world and actually see it as a huge conglomeration of particles, all acting together in the present moment. There are systems and subsystems that you could pick out, but the challenge is to overlook all of those, and see the whole thing as one movement. 

Maybe you won't see it at first, but gradually you get the idea and it becomes more of a possibility and then a reality. You can feel you are onto something and get glimpses of it while you try and understand what must be true.

You don't know the consequences of understanding this in terms of being happier or disappointed, because those sort of consequences come after the event of understanding. But because this understanding has to be true, you have to try to understand it in order to feel the truth in your bones, and in your mind. If your search is genuine. It is quite inspiring to be challenged with the overall understanding of what we are and how the world operates. But there is a more daunting challenge facing the committed determinist.

That is the challenge of understanding what it is that is challenged. What is searching and what is trying to understand. There is nothing outside of determine particles. There is nothing else.

So what is searching, seeking to know and understand? What is thinking? This is also made of particles. Even the  experience of the thoughts must also be particles, and determined by the moment to moment laws of physics.

This additional challenge seems to lead to a cull-de-sack, a dead end, yet it may also be the simple answer. In its simplest form it may be that particles are obeying the laws of physics got together and formed life which formed minds, thoughts and selves. One of which appears to be me. And this was and is deterministic in nature. Automatic.

No action or movement was ever anything but determined particle behavior.

I am a determined consciousness, thinking determined thoughts. Every movement or thought of mine is determined, as is every movement of a passing butterfly, or cloud.

Whether this understanding is satisfying or not, or comforting or not is irrelevant. Whether it's even true or logical (it is!) is irrelevant because the mind that is considering this (my mind) thinks only determined thoughts.  Are they my thoughts? How involved in this process am I?

The search seems to have come to a stand still, but maybe there is more.

Maybe my determined mind thinking determined thoughts will proceed to a further understanding.

This seems possible given the determined, subconscious nature of the seeking, which has little to do with me. Or better put: has nothing to do with a me!

No Person in There

It could be that human minds (and selves) aren’t all that big a deal.  Determinism led to life, which is basically molecular information reproducing itself, and then bodies and brains evolved. The brains processed information from within the body and also from without through the senses.

Eventually information exchange between bodies such as tails wagging, hackles rising and teeth baring, led to words and language. This whole process of information exchange (communication) led to new processes of survival such as co-operation and pooled and accumulated knowledge. 

Rather than me, I, the individual being a discrete unit observing and taking in the world. Rather than observing as if I am a source of consciousness, separate and able to act and think independently, maybe the whole idea of independent consciousness could be discarded in favor of one all-encompassing, determined process of conscious life.

This has been proven to be true in the case of the physical bodies and brains built by DNA and natural selection, including all the interactions with the world.

Why is it not also true for human interactions, personal awareness, thoughts and communication? All of consciousness!

Why are these not also observed as determined by the same physical laws of nature? This would make for a much simpler (and true) explanation of all life processes in the universe.

Many questions do arise to be solved, however let’s clarify the initial idea again:

The universe is made of particles and all particle behavior is determined. 

It's been revealed that all physical processes, including the evolution of living things, including their brains, are determined by the laws of physics.

Consciousness, awareness, thinking, language and communication are also physical processes and thus also determined by physical laws.

If there’s nothing other than determined processes, how is it that we can have a meaningful conversation?  Something must guide the physical particles to interact in a cohesive fashion. How could determinism, being just dumb particles, do this?

The startling challenge in all of this is to understand that all human thought and interaction is a process determined by particle behavior going back to the big bang.

Your discussion with your friends is a determined discussion in a determined universe. It happens according to particles obeying laws, not free thinking, or ideas and choices of words. Your belief in and thoughts about your own free will and choice are determined thoughts and beliefs, due to physical laws acting on physical particles. You are a determined construct that feels it believes in its own existence and agency. That feeling itself is also determined. 

So it can be logically argued and understood that all physical matter and all physical life forms and brains running conscious mental software, all come from the same source. That source being the amount of and exact arrangement of matter in the beginning - the big bang. 

That original arrangement evolved and unfolded in time to this present moment. Each moment causing the next and so on with no plan, no design and nothing to influence anything except the laws of physical nature.

What is very difficult to grasp is how something like a conversation between two people could be determined.

Imagine person A saying something to person B. It is possible to believe that person B responds in a certain predictable way. In a determined way. It is possible to to understand that person B, in exactly the same circumstances, would respond to person A in exactly the same way again, if the universe was replayed. And you could imagine person A in the same position as person B, responding to person B in the way they are determined to do. As the conversation unfolds it becomes more complicated and has a natural flow revealing the personality and the thoughts and experience, and memories and beliefs of A and B.

But this is exactly what determinism is! Each minute detail of the exchange occurs for some reason. Each molecule of their universe behaves as it must, as the physical laws dictate, according to the original set up of matter and the unfolding over time.

It seems that although I can understand this approach to reality, my awareness, my self,  still does seem like it’s confined in a particular body and has the ability to choose what it thinks and change its mind at any point if it wants to.

And this above approach would say that that too is a determined feeling and determined experience.

It could be, for instance, that the personal self awareness, along with pain, pleasure, desire and fear, evolved due to natural selection as a means of increasing reproductive fitness in the human species.

Even if humans (and all living things) are biological robots, it is possible that natural selection stumbled upon creating a “real, live, sentient” control centre that reacted to the world with emotions and feelings.

If life is pleasant we might say that this sensitive feeling of a self (me) being alive and aware and conscious with a subjective experience, is good. If life is difficult we might say that the subjective awareness (self) is an unfortunate and painful development, and it would have been better if biological human robots were equipped with purely robotic control centres. Control centres like those of the earthworm or honey bee.

Those unidentified, unaware, non-sensitive control centres could still do the same extremely complicated job of running a human without the experience of negative feelings and emotions. 

We know a blank, unaware control centre could still operate a human being, because it actually already does. The feeling of being a someone who it all happens to is actually the illusion created by evolution for improved survival.

It’s an illusion in that to an individual human, it feels like a true and aware presence is experiencing the world and itself. And that this presence is able to communicate off the cuff with others, and observe and have thoughts about itself. The individual believes one hundred percent that it is an alive free agent with free will and choice. The scientific facts suggest this “real” feeling of being an “aware someone” is an evolutionary adaptation that was selected for, not because it is true, but because it works. It works, but it is not true. It is an illusion.

Evolution or natural selection does not create this illusion on purpose. There is no plan or design, just what happens. And what happens is that variations or mutations happen, then the best ones for survival carry forward into future generations. Our feeling of self and free will and agency is one of these best adaptations perpetuated by natural selection. 

That feeling of self and free will does not represent the truth, but it is very advantageous for homo sapiens to better survive and reproduce. There is really no person inside a human brain. No identity, no agency to act, no free will. There is only that feeling. That feeling is what is selected for. The feelings of “my pain”, “my will”, “my desire”, “my choice” are what works, but there is no one there, just the feeling and the awareness of that feeling. 

The whole human society is built upon the illusion that we are free willed, choice making individuals, and people co-operate and interact on this basis. It does work. But humans are really biological robots interacting and “co-operating” with many different varieties of input/output signals. The individual’s thinking mind is also an illusion inside a bio-robot. The thoughts and feelings of a human are determined by past events and present events. Past events create the present events and a new past creates the next present. This is determinism. A long chain of cause and effect going back to the beginning.

This illusion of self and free will creates the feeling that the mind (my mind) is thinking, choosing and deciding by itself, independently to the rest of the world. My mind feels like it’s mine and I decide what it does. My mind feels like me in action. Actually the mind, my mind and my self are just as much determined particles as everything else. Just as much determined as a rock.

If you imagine all the 8 billion minds on the planet, they can all be viewed as automatic input/output control centres acting and interacting as determined. You can imagine that each mind/brain feels like a separate subjective self, but that it is in fact a mass produced organ which is part of the control apparatus for homo sapiens.

What is actually the most amazing aspect of all of this is that given the mind, self, and thoughts are determined, how can awareness exist at all?

A security camera can be connected to an alarm, but there is no awareness to see anything or to set off the alarm. It is automatic. Yet our visual field is intimately connected with our awareness and the awareness definitely seems to be “watching”.

It’s understandable that humans could and do operate according to determinism, but what is difficult to understand is that there is awareness as well. Homo sapiens are bio-robots which, unlike mechanical robots, have a built in aware presence or consciousness that seems to have free will and make choices. This subjective awareness or self has the overwhelming feeling that it experiences the senses and the mind of the human being.

Without this self aware consciousness there would be no experience of life or the world, and although everything would still exist, nothing would be known about it, anywhere at all!

So what is this aware presence: consciousness? 

At present quite a lot is known and science will find out more and more about it. There is no need for anything supernatural, as the entire nervous system, including thoughts, feelings and the senses all have a physical basis. They are all particles in action, and thus their behaviour is determined by prior states.

The Result of Things

Science has shown that:

1   The universe is made of fundamental particles which obey physical laws.

2  Physical laws cause particles to move in a determined manner.

3  The formation and evolution of life, being a physical process, has occurred in a determined manner, with no plan, purpose or guidance from anywhere.

4  Humans are the biological products of evolution.

6  Brains, thoughts and emotions are physical and are created and caused by physical laws.

7  Artifacts (ie: jumbo jets), feelings of free will and choice are all products of evolution.

8  The whole thing rolls on automatically, including the feelings of subjective experience, having choice and agency, and so on.

9  While this may not be the most intuitive or comforting scenario, it is definitely worth considering because it is the only one that can possibly be true.

Two Things

Is consciousness an illusion?

Is awareness an illusion?

Is subjective experience an illusion?

Is self an illusion?

Is thinking an illusion?

Is reality an illusion?

Is the world an illusion?

Is sensory experience an illusion?

Something is real but what is it? The only thing you have is the screen of awareness on which everything appears. For example - sensory experience, thoughts, memory and the perceived structure of the world. Not to mention the claiming of this awareness by a personal identity-me! That also appears.

If it's the case that everything is an illusion then that seems to be that. However you are left with everything still as it is. The same predicament. The same questions.

The illusion doesn't seem to be able to convince itself it is an illusion. How could it? What would be real or convincing in that strange process? 

So there are two things: truth and illusion.

Is there a real world out there ( truth ), and the illusion of a self experiencing that world? 

Has there evolved a roughly truth-seeking awareness entity by natural selection? And this awareness entity with other similar entities has, in spite of being a built up network of illusory processes, in spite of that, has hit upon truths about the world and about the universe? For instance DNA has no knowledge of light or optics to refer to, yet the eye has evolved  incorporating facts about light.

The illusions of self-awareness and experience have created a good approximation of the world, and often what appears to be an extremely accurate description of what we and the universe really are.

What is real? Is there truth and illusion? What about when hard determinism is included?

What am I then? The only simple thing I am is awareness. I am awareness and whatever my awareness is aware of. I am that only.

I could be aware of :-

Thoughts about what I am

A feeling in my knee

The taste of watermelon

A mathematical problem

What the meaning of life could be

Talking in conversation

Anything else

Whatever I am experiencing, that is what I presently am, whatever it is. I can't avoid being exactly what I am by daydreaming about the past for example, because that thought about the past is what I presently am. I am only ever, and always my present awareness and it's contents. Where is any illusion in that?

It's true, I can be wrong about things. Both as being a human animal with built in faults, and also as a person who has taken on certain attitudes and beliefs. Those things can be illusions I believe in.

But can I myself be an illusion? Can the entity that thinks, and thinks it's me, that is aware, can that be an illusion?

If that were an illusion, I would not be aware. The awareness speaks for itself but is the feeling of me myself as a person, owning and experiencing this awareness, is that an illusion?

It may be on some bigger scale of things. Looking from a detached perspective. But my awareness feeling personal, that's just as real as the awareness being aware of anything else, like say chocolate. It's an immediate truth if I look at it. And is there a bigger scale of things that would somehow allow me to see myself as an illusion? If it's outside my awareness, looking at myself, then I am not aware of that so called truth. 

There are two things, but not self (illusion), and objective reality (truth). They are both experienced in the same place, that is: the brain. They are both part of the same process

The two things are:

 One - self awareness including free will, choice and free thinking, as illusion, and

Two - determinism, governing every aspect of the universe, including human thought, action and feelings as truth.

If determinism is a fact, ie the truth, then where does the evidence occur? It can only occur in the illusion of self awareness.