All systems exist. Just because they are made of parts doesn’t make the pattern of their arrangement go away. This is my point about metaphysicians overlooking that arrangement is a part of what every object (and process) is; not just the material that composes it or the space it occupies.

That makes sense. But in order to avoid this baggage fallacy you mentioned, I’d like to ask a further clarifying question.

Let’s say we have an object (rock for simplicity). As a reductionist, would you say that the rock exists and that it is reducible to some fundamental irreducibles or that the rock doesn’t actually exist and only fundamental irreducibles exist. So the question basically boils down to whether rocks exist on the reductionist worldview.

I am a proper reductionist (see “reductionism” in the index of Sense and Goodness without God). Everything consists of an arrangement of matter-energy in space-time (emphasis on arrangement, which metaphysicists tend to forget about).

So I do believe everything is an intermingled set of systems, and thus everything reduces to parts (either ontologically or causally, an important distinction vis objects of consciousness, for example: The Mind Is a Process Not an Object, unless you define “object” so broadly as to include processes, which you can in block theory, which I also accept: see SaG, index, “time”).

That reduction to parts continues down to whatever the fundamental irreducibles would be (which would then not have parts). Which could be adjustable “fields” like physicists aver, or as I suspect it’s spacetime knots (see Superstring Theory as Metaphysical Atheism and The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit).

But be wary of baggage fallacies—just because I accept principles like these, does not mean I accept all the other “baggage” you or someone else might think is supposed to come with them. I might draw different conclusions from these principles, or solve any proposed metaphysical problems differently.

Do you think composite objects exist? Do you think objects with proper parts exist? I would expect that given that you are a moral realist, you think that at least some composite objects exist, but could be completely wrong (since those aren’t necessarily related) so I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

Since you must mean by “apples” an irrational emotivism that didn’t mention a single relevant fact rationally justifying it, I think those apples are poisonous and you should stop eating them.

1) Determinism is true. All rational thought must be deterministic, because rationally only one conclusion can ever follow from any given set of premises, and no rational conclusion (like a decision) can be reached without premises rationally producing it. We don’t even need to talk about physics to understand that rational behavior must always be deterministic; otherwise, it would fail to be consistently rational.

2) The reason we have less control over the past than the future is epistemic: we don’t know what the future will be but for what choices we make that will causally effect it; whereas the past cannot be changed after the fact, so our hindsight knowledge is impotent to make a better decision. This also requires no talk of physics. It’s simply an epistemic fact of our different access to knowledge between past and future, which is what establishes the importance of making choices at all.

3) Words are defined by use. Compatibilism is correct because it correctly describes how the word (“free will”) is actually used in practice. Contracausal free will is never actually used in any real-world context. So it has no relevance to reality. It thus has no role in law, sexual or medical ethics, or personal judgment or life development. And we’ve known this since Aristotle and Chrysippus. It is contracausal free will that is the fake, fabricated, fantastical definition that corresponds to no actual use of the world in any significant matter.

Thanks! You’re the only sane one in the comments !!

State A: Past events HA have happened, current state of the world is A, I will choose CA, future FA will happen.

State B: Past events HB have happened, current state of the world is B, I will choose CB, future FB will happen.

When I make my choice (CA or CB), I’m choosing/revealing which of those two states of the world are (my) reality. They’re package deals: CA follows from HA just as surely as it leads to FA, and the same holds for state B.

Which seems to give me just as much control over the past as I have over the future. In whatever sense I ‘exercise free will’ to make CA real and bring about FA, I also make it the case that HA is the true history.

My question is: Does this bother you at all (as a compatibilist), and if not, why not?

2) In no other field of discourse that comes to mind do we generally take a non-existent thing P and re-label the psychological cause of belief in that thing ‘P’ merely so that we get to keep using the word. What would be the precedent?

If P is a confused term, then asserting ‘P exists’ is either false or meaningless, not ‘trivially true because we can redefine it in some principled way’.