Lessons on Causality

[promethean75]

The unpredictability/chaos argument is also misused and overplayed in the debate as well. These are observational problems that occur from lacking information… but information content has nothing to do with the function of causation.

[promethean75]

Watch, it’ll get real quiet in this thread as they all scatter. Mark my words.

[Gloominary]

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[promethean75]

“Bottom line is, don’t tell me what to think, I’m keeping an open mind about a great deal.”

Oh my bad I ain’t even see this. Yeah no the freewill/determinism debate… the fact that there can be no freewill… changes very little about the way we live. The only thing such knowledge is really useful for is to help us understand better why people behave as they do. Without freewill, we are forced to take greater inventory and pay closer attention to people’s environments.

Determinists (I don’t like that anthropomorphic word tho… it’s misleading) are ‘effect detectives’, you might say. Freewillist are weak, lazy, resentful blamers who don’t want to put any work in. Scaredy cats.

[Urwrongx1000]

You didn’t do your homework. Silhouette already argued everything you can throw at it… and failed, miserably.

[promethean75]

I haven’t clicked on your links since one of those bitchute links I clicked months ago. That’s all I needed to see.

Run along now.

[Urwrongx1000]

This is my house, sonny.

[promethean75]

… and tell your step dad I still love him.

[Urwrongx1000]

Even you, prom, can recognize the difference between free and not free.

Because you are aware of this difference, you are merely hiding the fact that a ‘greater freedom’ is impossible to you, not that (physical) freedom is.

You’re not so stupid to deny the difference between jail and outside. But you don’t far enough. Again, just because something is impossible to you, it is not to others.

If you ever do your homework, then you will learn what I’ve already stated about the relationship of Power to Freedom.

Most people align Free-Will with application, loyalty, and devotion to Society or Humanity. This only scratches the surface.

Hypothetical question: is a Man more free or less by struggling for Money? To have zero dollars or one million? More, or less?

[promethean75]

Poor silhouette. No wonder he left.

[Gloominary]

Did you become a determinist before or after you became a Marxist prom?

[Urwrongx1000]

When has Mankind ever had the ‘freedom’ to turn his back on the society he was born into? Ever?

When humanity spread across the world, tribes and political boundaries formed, to present, where now every square mile of the globe is private-property.

There are fewer areas to escape into, fewer holes to hide in.

Are you freer away and apart from society, not dependent upon it?

Or within it, under the boots of somebody else’s authority?

Denying those who rule above and dominate you, doesn’t make them go away.

[promethean75]

youtu.be/vpqoQ-zGxBM

My god this fuckin guy here. The very definition of obfuscating nonsense. Was this recorded before or after the pill crash he went through earlier? And does he still travel around and get paid to fill college student heads with pancake batter?

[promethean75]

“Did you become a determinist before or after you became a Marxist prom?”

Around the Schopenhauer Nietzsche period which was several years before Marx. Then spinoza signed and sealed the deal.

But determinism is an indispensible philosophical element of historical materialism. Critically important.

[Gloominary]

@promethean75

“Did you become a determinist before or after you became a Marxist prom?”

Around the Schopenhauer Nietzsche period which was several years before Marx. Then spinoza signed and sealed the deal.

But determinism is an indispensible philosophical element of historical materialism. Critically important.

Right that’s why I asked.
People’s metaphysics tends to align with their sociopolitics, or vice versa, conscientiously or not.

[Urwrongx1000]

@Dan~

The smarter and stronger you are, the more free you become.
I believe the above is true, by definition.

If you’re not free, then you are stupider and weaker, according to Dan~

What say you, prom? Are you admitting that you are powerless, because you have no free-will, and that a child can roll you over?

[Urwrongx1000]

Claiming there is “no free-will, none” is equivalent as saying that all are powerless, completely. This isn’t true, by common sense.

Power is relative. Therefore, free-will is relative. Yet, relative to what?!

[Gloominary]

So much polarization, can’t we just let people think how they please?
Isn’t the world much richer and more interesting that way?
Is life not full of variability, and ambiguity, like iam would say?
Must even metaphysics become, partisan?

[promethean75]

… and gloom, there is a terrible misunderstanding that goes along with the use of the word ‘determinism’ as an antithesis to ‘freewill’. Extremely subtle, but nonetheless effects the way we think about causality. Your boy satyr is probably the best example of this confusion that I’ve ever seen on a forum board.

There is nothing that ‘determines’ what is going to happen in advance… nothing that holds a future plan in its head (like ‘god’) that then applies teleological forces to make it happen as planned. Such terminology is a fossil of ruling class philosophy of old… that bit about ‘cosmic order’ being the design of ‘logos’ and all that nonsense. Anyway check this excellent post out. This was many years ago at revleft.com…

@Rosa Lichtenstein

Ok, here is my summary [of my ideas on ‘determinism’], but comrades should not expect a water-tight solution to such a knotty problem in a few paragraphs. I am only posting this because I was asked to do so.

[I will however be publishing an essay specifically about this in the next few years, where I will substantiate what I have to say below far more fully.]

This issue has always revolved around the use of terminology drawn from traditional philosophy (such as “determined”, “will”, “free”, and the like), the use of which bears no relation to how these words are employed in ordinary speech.

For example, “determine” and its cognates are typically used in sentences like this “The rules determine what you can do in chess”, “The time of the next train can be determined from the timetable”, or “I am determined to go on the demonstration” and so on. Hence this word is normally used in relation to what human beings can do, can apply, or can bring about.

As we will see, their use in traditional thought inverts this, making nature the agent and human beings the patient. No wonder then that the ‘solution’ to this artificial problem (i.e., ‘determinism’ and ‘free will’) has eluded us for over 2000 years.

To use an analogy, would we take seriously anyone who wondered when the King and Queen in chess got married, and then wanted to know who conducted the ceremony? Or, whether planning permission had been sought for that castle over in the corner? Such empty questions, of course, have no answer.

To be sure, this is more difficult to see in relation to the traditional question at hand, but it is nonetheless the result of similar confusions. So, it is my contention that this ‘problem’ has only arisen because ideologically-motivated theorists (from centuries ago) asked such empty questions, based on a misuse of language. [More on this below.]

When the details are worked out, ‘determinism’, for instance, can only be made to seem to work if nature is anthropomorphised, so that such things as ‘natural law’ ‘determine’ the course of events – both in reality in general and in the central nervous system in particular – thus ‘controlling’ what we do.

But, this is to take concepts that properly apply to what we do and can decide, and then impose them on natural events, suggesting that nature is controlled by a cosmic will of some sort. [Why this is so, I will outline presently.]

So, it’s natural to ask: Where is this law written, and who passed it?

Of course, the answer to these questions is “No one” and “Nowhere”, but then how can something that does not exist control anything?

It could be responded that natural law is just a summary of how things have so far gone up to now. In that case, such ‘laws’ are descriptive not prescriptive – but it is the latter of these implications that determinists need.

Now, the introduction of modal notions here (such as ‘must’, or ‘necessary’) cannot be justified from this descriptive nature of ‘law’ without re-introducing the untoward anthropomorphic connotations mentioned above.

So, if we say that A has always followed B, we cannot now say A must follow B unless we attribute to B some form of control over A (and recall A has not yet happened, so what B is supposed to be controlling is somewhat obscure). And if we now try to say what we mean by ‘control’ (on lines such as ‘could not be otherwise’, or ‘B made A happen’) we need to explain how B prevented, say, C happening instead, and made sure that A, and only A took place.

The use of “obey” here would give the game away, since if this word is used with connotations that go beyond mere description, then this will imply that events like A understand the ‘law’ (like so many good citizens), and always do the same when B beckons, right across the entire universe --, and, indeed, that this ‘law’ must exist in some form to make things obey it. Of course, if it doesn’t mean this, then what does it mean?

Now, I maintain that any attempt to fill in the details here will introduce notions of will and intelligence into the operation of B on A (and also on C) – and that is why theorists have found they have had to drag in anthropomorphic concepts here (such as ‘determine’, ‘obey’ ‘law’ and ‘control’) to fill this gap, failing to note that the use of such words does indeed imply there is a will of some sort operating in nature. [But, note the qualification I introduce here, below. There were ideological reasons why these words were in fact used.]

If this is denied then ‘determine’ (etc.) can only be working descriptively, and we are back at square one.

Incidentally, the above problems are not to be avoided by the introduction of biochemical, neurological, and/or physiological objects and processes. The same questions apply here as elsewhere: how can, for example, a certain chemical ‘control’ what happens next unless it is intelligent in some way? Reducing this to physics is even worse; how can ‘the field’ (or whatever) control the future? ‘The field’ is a mathematical object and no more capable of controlling anything than a Hermite polynomial is. Of course, and once more, to argue otherwise would be to anthropomorphise such things – which is why I made the argument above abstract, since it covers all bases.

This also explains why theorists (and particularly scientists who try to popularise their work) find they have to use ‘scare quotes’ and metaphor everywhere in this area.

As I noted earlier, this whole way of looking at ‘the will’ inverts things. We are denied a will (except formally) and nature is granted one. As many might now be able to see, this is yet another aspect of the alienating nature of traditional thought, where words are fetishised and we are dehumanised.

And this should not surprise us since such questions were originally posed theologically (and thus ideologically), where theorists were quite happy to alienate to ‘god’ such control over nature and our supposedly ‘free’ actions’. Hence, we too find that we have to appropriate such distorted terminology if we follow traditional patterns of thought in this area.

No wonder Marx argued:

The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life. [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118.]

And:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an ‘eternal law.’ [Ibid., pp.64-65.]

These concepts “rule” us too if we are suitably uncritical.

[Urwrongx1000]

What I’m constantly surprised by, is how few people in the world actually believe in free-will, that it’s even a possibility.

It’s one thing to deny it to yourself. It’s another thing to try to deny it to everybody else, out of spite. This forum is capable of teaching the latter.