Skepticism as a religion-when does rationality bottom out?

[Eliyahu]

Hola everyone,

Some of you who have read my other "far out" posts may find this to be an absurd statement but actually I consider myself to be a deeply skeptical, highly rational objective and logical individual... I try to at the same time stay as open minded and free thinking as possible

So anyways that's just my own opinion of myself and it's neither here nor there.
The purpose of this thread is to ask the question ...at what point do logic and reason become the illogical and unreasonable?

I personally believe that questioning every bit of information that is handed to me is imperative to my survival..

It has been my observation however that there exist a certain type of people that are skeptical to what I would consider an unhealthy degree...These people debate it would seem not to find any real truth but just so that they can be right.

Not trying to offend any skeptics out there as all skeptics have my respect...I am just trying to explore what causes over-skepticism.

So my question here would be....how much skepticism is too much?

Where do you personally draw the line?

Also, how do people manage to get so bogged down by rationality that they begin acting in a irrational fashion?

On the flip side of this what do you think causes people to blindly agree with any type of information that is handed to them without question?



Thanks for reading this.

P.S you don't have to answer ALL the questions...just one or two would be nice.

 

[endlessness]

I dont agree with your identification of skepticism with rationality. I think skepticism is about questioning, about not falling absolutely into one world view or explanation of current data you have about the world and yourself.

I think skepticism is incredibly healthy, but of course its just one more tool that can be used for living a balanced healthy life. Being overly rational is not being skeptic, because you have to be skeptic of rationality too. Also people who believe the contrary of something seen as unlikely (e.g. "god doesnt exist", "hyperspace is just a mental trip and isnt real") is not being skeptic, it's a belief, just like believing god does exist or that all hyperspace elves are really demons or angels or aliens or hyperspacial beings that exist indepedent of us.

For me questioning and being skeptic is a very deep part of my life, but it would be lopsided and unbalanced if together with that, I wouldnt also dive into the unknown and let go. It's like skepticism is a rope connected to the outside world, and there are deep caves of beliefs and life experiences.. If you didnt have the rope, you could get lost in one cave forever, and not realize all the other equally or more interesting caves around. It could be dangerous too. But if you just stayed above with your rope and didnt really go in them, you also would be missing out on an amazing part of life, on all these experiences and possible world views.

So if you ask for the "limit", to me the limit is not really what not to question, because everything should be questioned, but is to know how to at the same "let go" and not mistake a closed minded non-believer attitude (which would be a belief as well as a lazy/conformist attitude) for healthy skepticism.

 

[jamie]

"at what point do logic and reason become the illogical and unreasonable?"

When they become arrogant and thick headed enough to assume that nothing outside of their current understanding is allowable.

 

[Eliyahu]

Those are both very lucid responses...

Thank you for contributing your perspectives

Endlessness wrote:
"I don't agree with your identification of skepticism with rationality. I think skepticism is about questioning, about not falling absolutely into one world view or explanation of current data you have about the world and yourself"

Endlessness...I do in fact dig your definitions of reason and skepticism so I'm not trying t be a smarty pants or anything here but just to point out the futility of our abstract language I will list the official definitions according to the web:

definition of Skeptic:
a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual. 2. a person who maintains a doubting attitude

Rational definition:
agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development. 2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm

Reasonable definition:
reasonable; sensible: 2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm ...

 

[jdubs]

Jamie wrote:

"at what point do logic and reason become the illogical and unreasonable?"

When they become arrogant and thick headed enough to assume that nothing outside of their current understanding is allowable.

I actually feel quite sorry for very militant, narrow-minded atheists for this reason. Just because science hasn't explained things yet, doesn't mean they're not real. It must be a cold life to reside in such a blinkered mind. That being said, most (moderate) atheists I know are prepared to accept there are some things they cannot explain, and many have personal anecdotes that they remain mystified about. Also, the dawning of quantam mechanics has cracked the ground beneath reason and logic, even to the most militant of atheists.

It is as if the Enlightenment led a crushing blow to the human spirit of creativity and openness, in exchange for scientific 'progress'.


Eliyahu/the internet said:

Rational definition:
agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development. 2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm

Also 'good sense' and 'reason' are tied to an already pre-supposed set of cultural, Western 'Enlightenment' ideals, according to the dominant class (of the 18th century). But is is a meaningless term. Who now decides what 'sense' is good? The dominant class? The same people that build the bombs? I wouldn't take their word for it...

Is it 'good sense' to wage war on innocents for oil profits? I doubt it.

All language is like the waves of an ocean, changing, and morphing and what 'good sense' is for you to decide, after closely listening to your heart.

Reason and logic can only go so far, as most of us well know. In the ancient worlds, the limits were obvious. Anything beyond could only be called divine. It is only in the fairly recent modern world, that the recognition of the limitations of reason and rationality have become lost.

True, reason and rationality have brought many things (lifesaving medicines/the ability to see the world/the possibilities inherent in this Nexus itself etc.), but progress has come at a tragic cost.

All this being said, the pre-Enlightenment, medieval world didnt sound too great either. IMO ORGANIZED religion also has much to answer for. But that's another story for another time, a story older than 'civilisation'.

 

[Vodsel]

...at what point do logic and reason become the illogical and unreasonable?

So my question here would be....how much skepticism is too much?

Where do you personally draw the line?

Where doubt is serving a personal agenda. When the reluctance to consider alternatives comes after deciding that a hypothesis is a fact, and you won't let anything challenge that decision. Cognitive dissonance.

If someone cannot remember that absence of evidence does NOT equal evidence of absence, they are not skeptics. They are just bending the rules in their own convenience.

 

[Eliyahu]

Let me just take a moment to bask in the brilliance of all your statements......

:d


Ok,
I truly believe that this forum represents the creme' de la creme' of English speaking intellectual elite on this Planet......it's like 98.9% of DMT nexus members are certifiably genius!

MENSA might as well close up shop at this point....


AND PBS....Eat your freakin' heart out!

 

[polytrip]

Jamie wrote:

"at what point do logic and reason become the illogical and unreasonable?"

When they become arrogant and thick headed enough to assume that nothing outside of their current understanding is allowable.

I actually feel quite sorry for very militant, narrow-minded atheists for this reason. Just because science hasn't explained things yet, doesn't mean they're not real. It must be a cold life to reside in such a blinkered mind. That being said, most (moderate) atheists I know are prepared to accept there are some things they cannot explain, and many have personal anecdotes that they remain mystified about. Also, the dawning of quantam mechanics has cracked the ground beneath reason and logic, even to the most militant of atheists.

It is as if the Enlightenment led a crushing blow to the human spirit of creativity and openness, in exchange for scientific 'progress'.


Eliyahu/the internet said:

Rational definition:
agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development. 2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm

Also 'good sense' and 'reason' are tied to an already pre-supposed set of cultural, Western 'Enlightenment' ideals, according to the dominant class (of the 18th century). But is is a meaningless term. Who now decides what 'sense' is good? The dominant class? The same people that build the bombs? I wouldn't take their word for it...

Is it 'good sense' to wage war on innocents for oil profits? I doubt it.

All language is like the waves of an ocean, changing, and morphing and what 'good sense' is for you to decide, after closely listening to your heart.

Reason and logic can only go so far, as most of us well know. In the ancient worlds, the limits were obvious. Anything beyond could only be called divine. It is only in the fairly recent modern world, that the recognition of the limitations of reason and rationality have become lost.

True, reason and rationality have brought many things (lifesaving medicines/the ability to see the world/the possibilities inherent in this Nexus itself etc.), but progress has come at a tragic cost.

All this being said, the pre-Enlightenment, medieval world didnt sound too great either. IMO ORGANIZED religion also has much to answer for. But that's another story for another time, a story older than 'civilisation'.

Well, i think that you can never realy proof directly what´s a rational decission and what isn´t, simply because rationality is something of a higher order than formal logic. If you would want to prove that something is rational, then you would have to prove it logically and since logic is more limited than for instance the human mind is, it tends to fall short.

However, i think you could prove it inderectly: when you look at game theory and you would pick-out a very simple game, then anybody would be able to confirm that something is a rational move regardless of cultural background etc.

Or at least you could say this: although anybody who would claim to know what the word 'rational' means, would fail to define the word, they would all agree WITHOUT ANY FORM OF COMMUNICATION on what´s a rational move and what isn`t.

So this means that even if rationality is an illusion, wich it very well might be, it has some kind of 'realness' as a phenomenon. The illusory aspect could be that rationality is realy rational, but not that it exists as a phenomenon.

At the same time i think that such a way of 'proving' rationality would reveal that rationality must have a subjective dimension or even that it is highly subjective within it´s very core.

The only way i can think of of proving rationality would be, to disect the way in wich a statement could be true: So let´s assume that something could be true from a logical perspective and that you could indeed proof the logical aspect of a proposition. The problematic part would be both the subjective part of that proposition and the way in wich the logical and subjective part would be linked...
It is almost impossible to proof that something is true at a subjective level (wich would be necessary when you would want to prove that one, from a rational point of view, 'ought to do something') or to transfer proof from the logical to the subjective level.

Rationality must therefore be a phenomenon that has a strange characteristic: when it´s true, you can never realy prove it is. However, when a proposition is not rational, than you could always prove that it is not, simply because it would therefore have to be logically flawed, empirically invalid, etc.

So when a statement would be constructed in a certain specific way, where subjective and objectifiable elements would be linked in a certain specific way and you could prove that it is not logically or empirically invalid AND you would not be able to prove the rationality of the statement....then that would proof that the statement would be rational.

Just like a statement 'i am a liar' could be true when you disect the different levels on wich a linguistic expression could be true or false.

The rational universe is like when you place two mirrors in front of eachother that seem to create a space that is both endless as well as very limited at the same time.
The mystery lies behind those mirrors as well as in the very fact that those mirrors are placed in such a way.

 

[jdubs]

Polytrip wrote:

However, i think you could prove it inderectly: when you look at game theory and you would pick-out a very simple game, then anybody would be able to confirm that something is a rational move regardless of cultural background etc.

This is true indeed. I mean, there surely is such a thing as good sense. It is clearly good sense not to eat a plate of glass for dinner, for example.

My point, was mainly that people that have convinced themselves to be the pinnacle of 'reason' have sometimes used this as an excuse to commit terrible crimes. This exposes the flaws and limitations of the very concept.

The cultures that took the classical concept of 'reason' into their centre were very often the ones that started murderous empires. They saw it as 'reasonable' to assume that because they followed say, The Bible (which was, to them, of course, gospel truth) then that was reason enough to assume their god-given right to crusade in gods name, against 'heathen' people's. These people (and slaves, another example) were not seen as fully human, as they did not have 'god-given' knowledge of the Bible or of 'reason' (Argh a paradox!) . It was therefore reasoned that they were inferior, based on the incomplete knowledge of the time. This reasoning justified horrific historical crimes against humanity

In these instances, the crusaders/slavetraders reasoning, based on very shaky, and incomplete ground, bypassed their morality, intuition (to just know that what they were doing was inherently wrong) and therefore their humanity.

This is an example of how pure 'reason' can be incredibly detrimental to the welfare of the entire planet, because such reasoning can sometimes be terribly flawed. Many people 'reasoned' that Jewish people were responsible for all the problems in 1930-40's Germany. The unimaginable consequences of such terrible reasoning is clear.

We can very safely say that those that committed such crimes were deluded. However through this, we must also concede the great likliehood that we are also deluded, often. As you suggest, the human mind is extrememly fallible to forces of suggestion and manipulation. Also, our scientific knowledge is, although, advanced, still incomplete. We must therefore 'reason' that our reason is flawed (argh, another paraodx!), and often based on shaky ground.

(Of course, eating glass will always be a bad idea (in this dimension at least). Therefore there are things that can be said to be 'universally good sense'.)

This shows that there is a direct conflict between intuition, morality, and reason. If we rely too much on reason they run the risk of being cold and calculating, according to incomplete ideas of 'fact' and 'righteousness'. Of course, if we had no reason at all, we would be eating glass for dinner.

We can only conclude that a balance is necessary. We must use our intuition and morality to decide what is 'reasonable', and not allow our inbuilt morality to be overwhelmed or limited by intellectual reasoning; as said intellectual reasoning is necessarily (as we are only human, without a total understanding of anything) flawed.


Polytrip wrote:

The rational universe is like when you place two mirrors in front of eachother that seem to create a space that is both endless as well as very limited at the same time.
The mystery lies behind those mirrors as well as in the very fact that those mirrors are placed in such a way.

This, I am still trying to get my head round :lol:

 

[Felnik]

Terrence mckenna had a great talk talking about the limiting nature of religion and any steadfast belief systems and such .

Put simply , believing whole heartedly in one view limits ones ability to see its opposite .
This is a limiting perspective.

His suggestion of provisional theories regarding the phychedelic experience I believe to be a valued approach.

Dogmatic thinking is a trap in anything.

Open minded balance in all things is a good place to start .

 

[tele]

Open minded balance in all things is a good place to start .

I wish everybody would start there:roll:

 

[Beelzebozo]

So my question here would be....how much skepticism is too much?

Where do you personally draw the line?

Also, how do people manage to get so bogged down by rationality that they begin acting in a irrational fashion?

On the flip side of this what do you think causes people to blindly agree with any type of information that is handed to them without question?

As others have already established, skepticism is hard to argue with as a good habit to have. So I will respond to your questions by replacing "skepticism" with "rationality."

I think it has to do with a blind spot that develops. Just like many would-be "gurus," who profess to be without ego, exhibit extremely egoic behavior, sometimes even to the point of abusing and misleading others. Similarly, people who think themselves to be the pinnacle of rationality at some point succumb to the human tendency towards lazy thinking, and their hypotheses become beliefs. (But don't dare ever call them beliefs or they'll burn you at the stake :roll: ).

As for the reason why humans have a tendency to proclaim "I have arrived!" or "I have the truth!" I think it comes down to fear of reality. By that I mean, the obvious reality that I have no idea what this is, where it's going, who I am, or much of anything else really. The only thing I can know for certain is that something is happening, or, in other words, "awareness exists."

Our culture is very insecure about the unknown, that's why we're organized around the promulgation of knowledge (via school, religion, media, etc.). You're supposed to be in the know. The idea of death, of course, is the ultimate symbol for the unknown, and guess what? That is one of the most taboo subjects in our culture. We all have an inevitable personal date with the unknown? Oh no, mustn't think of that!

At some point, one has to confront the friction between what one actually experiences and what one is capable of representing to others via language as a model of reality. Do I explore these things that don't make sense, which everything I've been taught tells me can't be real, or do I keep quiet and take the dive? At some level, it's like we come to believe that if we can't tell someone else about it, it's as good as worthless. :lol: Which disqualifies all of the experiences in life most worth having.

 

[SWIMfriend]

The limit of "rationality" as most people think of it, is language. Some tend to forget that language is only SYMBOLOGY--and that it is SPECIFICALLY not "external reality." At it's best it can usefully CONVEY aspects of external reality, but it never equals external reality--and there's no specific reason to believe there must ALWAYS be a useful symbolic way to represent all things in external reality.

HOWEVER...forums are composed of language ONLY (and some photos, videos, audios, or graphical expressions). Therefore, anything stated on a forum MUST be rational--or be incoherent.

Language can also be used as one tool in "referencing" the unspeakable. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is an example. And that's not irrational; but when used in that way, the language is specifically understood to be "a-rational," and not meant to factually describe anything in external reality--which can be manipulated cognitively, or assigned a truth value.

Note: And skepticism, as others have pointed out, is only an attitude of interpretation of facts and experiences which attempts to use methods of "reliable judgment" (testing, verifying, comparing with previous knowledge, etc), and which acknowledges that human reports and interpretations of aspects of external reality are often flawed.

 

[daedaloops]

As for the reason why humans have a tendency to proclaim "I have arrived!" or "I have the truth!" I think it comes down to fear of reality. By that I mean, the obvious reality that I have no idea what this is, where it's going, who I am, or much of anything else really. The only thing I can know for certain is that something is happening, or, in other words, "awareness exists."

Very nice post, but I wanted to comment on this. I see alot of people here saying that awareness or consciousness is the only thing that can be known for certain to exist. But I don't think it's that simple. For example, this could easily be just a simulation that is running, and everything that happens is just a predetermined chain of consequences tracing all the way back to the starting conditions of the simulation. In that case, this perceived awareness would be just an illusion. If you really think about free will, there's no way to prove whether it exists or not, if you choose to move your hand left instead of right, you have no way to tell if that was always gonna happen anyway. So doesn't the same apply to awareness? Sure it seems like we are being "aware" of things, but I don't think it would be that hard to program by a level of intelligence that we can't even imagine. Oh, but I guess in that case the awareness would exist in the form of those intelligences... Well, but who knows maybe they died off while the simulation was running and now this is all that's left. Like I said, it's not that simple, and there could be many other different scenarios where awareness would be just an illusion.

As for what you said earlier, "something is happening", now THAT actually can be known to exist. I think that's the only thing that can be known to exist. Because if something wasn't happening, then THIS, or ***, or ' ', wouldn't be possible. Something is definitely happening. And I think that should be the only "belief" that skeptics and atheists have. .....or is it?

 

[Beelzebozo]

The limit of "rationality" as most people think of it, is language. Some tend to forget that language is only SYMBOLOGY--and that it is SPECIFICALLY not "external reality." At it's best it can usefully CONVEY aspects of external reality, but it never equals external reality--and there's no specific reason to believe there must ALWAYS be a useful symbolic way to represent all things in external reality.

HOWEVER...forums are composed of language ONLY (and some photos, videos, audios, or graphical expressions). Therefore, anything stated on a forum MUST be rational--or be incoherent.

Language can also be used as one tool in "referencing" the unspeakable. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is an example. And that's not irrational; but when used in that way, the language is specifically understood to be "a-rational," and not meant to factually describe anything in external reality--which can be manipulated cognitively, or assigned a truth value.

Note: And skepticism, as others have pointed out, is only an attitude of interpretation of facts and experiences which attempts to use methods of "reliable judgment" (testing, verifying, comparing with previous knowledge, etc), and which acknowledges that human reports and interpretations of aspects of external reality are often flawed.

Very well put.

I've posted this elsewhere, but a good way to trick oneself out of the self-referential language loop is to write a word on an index card and then tape it to the actual experiential object which it's supposed to represent. If you meditate on it for more than a few seconds, you'll catch that *this*, here-now-experiencing, isn't a word.

Then it's easy to take ones hypotheses and "truths" a lot less seriously.

Edit: Just saw your post, Daedaloops.

As for the reason why humans have a tendency to proclaim "I have arrived!" or "I have the truth!" I think it comes down to fear of reality. By that I mean, the obvious reality that I have no idea what this is, where it's going, who I am, or much of anything else really. The only thing I can know for certain is that something is happening, or, in other words, "awareness exists."

Very nice post, but I wanted to comment on this. I see alot of people here saying that awareness or consciousness is the only thing that can be known for certain to exist. But I don't think it's that simple. For example, this could easily be just a simulation that is running, and everything that happens is just a predetermined chain of consequences tracing all the way back to the starting conditions of the simulation. In that case, this perceived awareness would be just an illusion. If you really think about free will, there's no way to prove whether it exists or not, if you choose to move your hand left instead of right, you have no way to tell if that was always gonna happen anyway. So doesn't the same apply to awareness? Sure it seems like we are being "aware" of things, but I don't think it would be that hard to program by a level of intelligence that we can't even imagine. Oh, but I guess in that case the awareness would exist in the form of those intelligences... Well, but who knows maybe they died off while the simulation was running and now this is all that's left. Like I said, it's not that simple, and there could be many other different scenarios where awareness would be just an illusion.

As for what you said earlier, "something is happening", now THAT actually can be known to exist. I think that's the only thing that can be known to exist. Because if something wasn't happening, then THIS, or ***, or ' ', wouldn't be possible. Something is definitely happening. And I think that should be the only "belief" that skeptics and atheists have. .....or is it?

I question free-will very strongly myself (Sam Harris has a great super-short book on this topic called, believe it or not, "Free Will," in which he demolishes the concept).

I'm very intrigued by your post. I think it basically comes down to whether or not there is a "self." If there is, then it's reading these words. If there isn't, then these words and the appearance of someone reading them is just happening, but it's not happening to anything.

In either case, it looks like "this," _______ (whatever the experience is now), so, yes, I agree that "something is happening" is the one kernel of knowledge that we have.

Fun stuff to think about. 8)

 

[hixidom]

If there isn't [a self], then these words and the appearance of someone reading them is just happening, but it's not happening to anything.

I agree that "something is happening" is the one kernel of knowledge that we have.

How can "you" agree that "we" have knowledge if there is not a self behind the "you" and "we"? My view has always been in agreement with your statement about the self, but I would say that we might as well assume that free will and the self exists since, if they do not, there is no "we" to "assume" in the first place. We can't be wrong in making that assumption, because the alternative is that "we", the selves, never existed in the first place. Imagining a world without free will requires the self which imagines to exist. I say this because I would hardly call the determined interactions of cells, molecules and atoms "imaginings". I.e., thinking about the nonexistence of the self is paradoxical by definition of "thinking" (as it pertains to "the self" ), in my opinion. I do like paradoxes, however.

EDIT: I just noticed that you didn't explicitly deny the existence of the self, so I would like to redirect my comment at Sam Harris. I don't understand how he could "demolish" free will without making the same questionable assumptions that all atheists tend to make without a second thought.

 

[Beelzebozo]

I don't necessarily hold on to any belief about "the universe," there might be free will, whatever that might mean, against all rationalization.

Anyway, I don't have the time to really flip through Sam's book and pull up any of his arguments, but I'll give you the gist, from my own perspective, of why I abandoned the idea of "free will." (And I'll make it brief, because this is kind of side-tracking the thread.)

If I observe my direct experience (meditation), I see that I have no idea what thought is coming next. It just pops in there, as Dan Akroyd says in Ghostbusters :lol: , and I don't know how or why. Suddenly I find that I'm thinking about pink elephants. If, to prove that I have free will, I decide to think about something else, the fact is that my decision to think about something else also just "popped in there," and whatever new subject that I think about will also be predetermined. If I find I'm then thinking about Zeus, why didn't I start thinking about Hades or Jesus? I had no choice, Zeus is simply what, again, "popped up."

Suddenly, I find that I'm tilting my head in a certain direction, it's just happening. In fact, if I try to figure out what free will means, I come to the realization that it doesn't make any sense at all. I think it was Alan Watts who said it, but if we were really autonomously making decisions, then we'd have to first decide to decide, and do that, we'd have to decide to decide to decide, ad infinitum. If you get a feel for this, you begin to sense that the universe is connected, nothing is excluded. A mouse dying in Africa is intimately related to a bomb dropping on Hiroshima, which is directly related to the formation of a new galaxy or the birth of a baby girl in Vietnam. You can't subtract anything from the universe because every speck of dust, every star, every person is a crucial part of it, it's all the "same thing," whatever that "thing" is. Things don't kind of or sort of exist, "something is happening," existence is, whatever it is. This is the big bang banging, as a friend of mine once said.

This is a way of looking at it, of course, and there are very, very many. 8)

But I agree, I think it's important to see that atheists tend to make a lot of the same leaps of faith as religious people. You hear about fanatics turned atheists because of skepticism, but you almost never hear of those atheists turned into agnostics by the same means. It's quite disappointing. :lol:

 

[hixidom]

That is a very good point. I hate to use a physical argument here, but I would compare the "deciding to decide to decide..." part to an object moving between any two points and passing an infinite number of points in between. I know that deciding something takes a certain amount of time, but if the time required to make a decision is proportional to the "size" of the decision, then we could make an infinite number of decisions in a finite amount of time because an infinitisemal decision would only take an infinitisemal amount of time to make.

Even if the entire universe plays a part in my decision-making then, well, the universe would be the "thinker", in that case, and we are all like thoughts... Nevermind; we don't need to go down that road.

Anyways, I tend to agree that if consciousness exists, then actions (such as decision-making) are impossible and vice versa. It still seems to me, however, that I am "conscious" of all of this stuff going on. I don't really have a good analogy or description for this, but I'm aware of thoughts popping into my head, and so it at least seems that there is a self which perceives these thoughts or is aware of them, even if it cannot control them. That reality, and indeed my thoughts and actions, are out of my control is a concept that I can side with, but such a concept still does not provide any understanding of why there is a point of consciousness that is observing reality in such a way right now. So perhaps I would say that I too deny the existence of free will, but not the existence of the "self".

I feel that a similar argument to the "popping up" one could be used to support that the "self" exists. For example: How do you know that thoughts are merely popping into your head? You would have to be a being that can perceive and derive knowledge before you could make this claim. What is knowledge and how do you derive it? How do you know that you are perceiving in the first place? All knowledge seems to require assuming the existence of some form of conscious self. You can externalize this consciousness and try to analyze it, but then you are only assuming the role of a secondary consciousness, which you could observe by assuming the role of a tertiary consciousness... So perhaps I would say that there is always consciousness, and thus it is meaningless to deny the existence of consciousness. I don't think that consciousness implies free will, but since this consciousness exists outside of my understanding, I see no particular reason that it cannot be coupled with free will in some inexplicable way. After all, though we agree I cannot actually make decisions, my consciousness does tend to experience pleasure more often than pain. This could just be a coincidence or a matter of perception, or it could be that the thing that perceives does have some sort of control over the object of its perception.

Sorry for derailing this thread even further. I have no doubt that it will find it's way back on track eventually.