Determinism

I fought Silhouette for dozens of pages about that. It doesn’t seem to click with Determinists.

There’s no way to know whether it “had to have been” or not. It’s merely an (illogical, irrational) assumption. Determinists take for granted that things are “Determined”.

Then they can’t tell you what’s Un-determined. Hard to reason with such irrational people…

Are you implying a particular thing that it tells others about me? must it be that?

I think it could mean a number of things. Some seem fine to me, some not.

Here’s why I do that. Rightly or wrongly I find that you have trouble actually understanding the point of what people are saying, except as it reflects on your core question. So, I experience that you often do not respond to what I write, but repeat what you have written many times before as if it applies. Sometimes it does, often it does not, always I already knew your position, so it does not further the discussion.

If you think I will not read your response, you might not spend time trying to defend your position and you might not repeat what we have all read many times. You might just sit with what I said, mull it over, consider it in a different way. I was not optimistic, but that was my hope.

I have engaged you in long, long interactions. So I have shown I am capable of interacting over long periods to your posts.

I find it passive-aggressive when you ask the gallery questions, rather than simply stating what you think it means. It might not be passive aggressive, you might really be simply curious to get their interpretation. I think your philosophy allows for a great deal of passive aggressiveness, since you can always say you can’t be sure. Sort of erasing what you say as you write it. That may be swaying me to think that you are being passive-aggressive when you ask others questions like the above.

It is certainly one way people are passive aggressive, asking the question as if the answer is obvious, but not taking responsibility for saying directly what they think it means. But it might not be in this case.

It might also not be the case that you think there is one possible thing my doing what I did means. Perhaps you realize that my saying I would not read your response could mean lots of things, especially in a context where I have engaged for long long sequences with you before. I hope you did mull it over. I only saw your response above in Seredippers post. I didn’t read yours. So, there is always that chance to mull, even now.

and like those who believe there is a ‘free will’, the determinists would also be wrong. both positions are nonsensical. with the philosophy of ‘freewill’ there occurred a transposition of adjectives originally used to describe intentional and ambitious acts (e.g., he has a strong will) into properties belonging to some entity (will), which was something different than the body. this entire confusion revolves around calling into question an agency which doesn’t exist. one doesn’t have a ‘will’, just like one doesn’t have a ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ or a ‘soul’. the use of these words as entities rather than as descriptions for behaviors is the source of such philosophical confusions.

you’ll see in this excellent summary - which i frequently post anywhere i find this argument in progress - why to use the phrase ‘determine’ is misleading when trying to devise an alternative position to ‘freewill’.

wouldn’t all behavior be obligatory in a determined universe? :slight_smile:
which means that as one realizes this, if one does, then one might feel less blame,
which I believe was one of peacegirl’s points. That we will be affected by the knowledge of determinism, over time, to no longer blame. It will have always been inevitable when we do. And would include blaming me for setting him straight and leaving the discussion.

Oddly, I was actually in a fairly compassionate mood when I wrote that post. I thought they were talking past each other. Thought there was a small chance I could brigde.

I think I’ll go back to snarky.

I disagree with that.

Everybody has a list of (metaphysical) values, beliefs, ideals, identifications that they are willing to fight and die for.

For example, if you have a wife and kids, then most people would be willing to act on that. People also believe they own/possess/owe others, which is not bodily/physically apparent.

and you can do that… and you can even talk of ‘having’ a will in ordinary language. it’s only when we get philosophical that the conceptual confusions arise surrounding the meaning of the word ‘will’. when we think of ‘will’ as some immaterial substance, we commit a category mistake (see gilbert ryle) if we then proceed to talk about it in the traditional philosophical sense (plato > descartes), and our predications become nonsensical.

‘he has a strong will’

so we have two entities, the person, and the will which they possess? or rather do we say the person’s disposition, in this case the resolve, was persistent? if the latter then we are describing a capacity of behavior and not a thing, not an entity, not a subject ‘will’. if the former was have to ask; where is this will kept. then the metaphors appear; ‘by his heart’, or ‘in his soul’, etc. now we’re talking poetry, not philosophy.

you find this kind of subtle category mistake present everywhere in philosophy from the ancient greeks all the way up to freud and his theory of psychic apparatus. but again, there is no need to point this subtle mistake out if we aren’t speaking in a philosophically technical language… since that’s only where the confusion appears.

yeah but i dunno why you’d call such things ‘metaphysical’.

be that as it may, i’m simply saying there is no freewill first because there is no ‘will’ in the sense that philosophers think there is, and second, even if there were, it sure as shit wouldn’t be ‘free’ in the sense that philosophers think of it as being. then at the same time i deny the doctrine of determinism because that is a gross anthropomorphothromorphicization of nature.

Thank you! That’s what I was trying to explain. It’s only after a happening that it could not not have happened. We have choices but once a choice is made it could not have been otherwise. That does not mean we are in a fixed state where our choices are not our own, or that the choice has already been made for us using the domino example. This is an important observation because our consent has to precede any choice made.

Once again, the definition over words is a semantic one. Will simply means the ability to choose one thing over another based on one’s desire. It can be a strong desire or a weak one depending on the choice being made. This will is never free because we are never given a free choice.

yeah sure, but that’s compatibalism/soft-determinism… which is the failed last vestige to save freewill and responsibility from having to swallow the ‘last bitter drop’ (nietzsche) of the truth and surrender to amoralism.

it’s what biggy has been trying to explain to you for weeks; you can’t get around the problem by saying ‘we can choose between our desires’, because that choice, too, is just another domino (as biggy put it).

What I assume in a world where we do have some measure of autonomy, is that “I” is embedded in the laws of nature in the either/or world. Here there are objective truths seemingly applicable to all of us. However, in the is/ought world of conflicting goods, “I” is still no less an “existential contraption”. At least at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. Obligations here are predicated on any particular objective context construed from any particular subjective/subjunctive point of view.

Forget X and Y. Forget electrons. Bring this assessment down to earth by describing what you construe to be cause and effect with respect to human interactions. How one might differentiate them in the either/or and in the is/ought world. Rewind the universe 24 hours and assess whether today’s news headlines might have been different in a wholly determined universe. From my frame of mind, given a determined universe, the is/ought world is indistinguishable from the either/or world. It’s just that matter evolving into life on Earth evolving into human brains evolving into self-conscious minds is able to concoct and then sustain the illusion of free will.

Still: We can speculate about all of this until we are blue in the face. But what can we actually demonstrate is in fact true such that all rational men and women are obligated to believe it. Going all the way back to the explanation for existence itself.

Okay, but 24 hours ago, could I have freely chosen to think I know something other than what I came to think I know?

Again and again: I’m more than willing to concede the points that you are making here [like the points that others are making] are in fact more in sync with what is actually true.

But if that is the case it has not sunk in. Or not yet. But how am I to determine if, in a wholly determined universe, there was ever the possibility of my having freely chosen to think about it differently 24 hours ago such that today I would instead be exclaiming, “oh, now I get it!”

How is not before something happened, something happens and something else will happen, not embedded inherently, necessarily, wholly in “nature’s way”?

The body and the behavior are the same “thing”.

This is why a woman can be a super-model, but dumb as a brick, and/or be repulsive in many other traits, and beauty alone isn’t good enough.

Identity, the “will”, involves both aspects.

Even though midgets may have a “strong will”, doesn’t mean they’ll be taken seriously or respected though. Willpower = Body (power) + Behavior (will).

Right, but notwithstanding yet more beating around the bush, what is your subjective point of view concerning the obligations one has to a game he/she started?

X and Y and electrons is bringing it down to earth. How much closer to earth can I get than electrons?

Exhibit an example that you think is down to earth and then I will shoehorn it into probable outcomes.

What does this mean? Why qualify “world” with “either/or and is/ought”? Why not just say “world”? What information is the qualifier conveying?

The chance it would unfold the same is unfathomable.

Right.

Wrong. Life cannot come from nonlife. Something from nothing is absurd.

Freewill can only be realized in the context of things that are not free.

The pertinent question is what can be demonstrated to irrational men and women such that they are obligated to believe it? Rational men and women are not the problem :wink:

How does one demonstrate red to a blind man such that he is obligated to believe it?

Existence itself doesn’t exist. Circular argument. Things exist in a context and existence has no context to exist in, but is essentially a synonym for relationship, which arises spontaneously when one thing is perceived to be different from another thing even though they are codependent and in fact the same thing.

I’m merely describing my reaction to your participation in threads that include me. It seems true to me. On the other hand, all of this may well be embedded in a wholly determined universe such that these very words that I am choosing to type [and that you either are or are not choosing to read] may be entirely beyond our control as autonomous human beings.

And I point out time and again that in reard to conflicting value judgments in the is/ought world, and in grappling with the really Big Questions regarding the either/or world, my own understanding of “the point” is entangled in either “existential contraptions” or in the gap between what I think I know about “ultimate reality” here and now and all there is to be known about the very nature of existence itself.

That’s why over and over and over again I suggest that, to the extent that we are able, we bring “the point” down to earth.

Right, like there is no possibility of my turning this around and suggesting that, from my frame of mind, it is also applicable to you.

To the best of my recollection, I have always at least made an attempt to respond to your posts. I don’t just abandon the points that you make altogether. Instead, you strike me as one of the “serious philosophers” here. You become rankled when others don’t agree with the points you make. In other words, for others to respond they must eventually agree.

Whereas from my frame of mind, dasein and conflicting goods [embedded in existential contraptions], all but guarantee “failure to communicate.”

We’ll just have to agree to disagree reagarding our respective reactions to each other. Unless, of course, someone is actually able to demonstrate/prove which of us is in fact closer to the objective truth.

Instead, over and again [from my point of view] I get stuff like this from you…

What on earth does this mean? Note a particular context in which human beings do interact, and we can discuss our respective misunderstandings with regard to both determinism and pragmatism.

this thesis, my dear friend, is categorically false. so false, in fact, that my kind has never before experienced a greater threat than the danger presented to us by one specific midget who would have exterminated our entire race if we had not stopped him. when one is faced with extinction, one does not underestimate one’s enemy on account of him being a midget. while dr. trask was indeed small in stature, his will was a gargantuan force and something to be respected with the greatest reverence. had his sentinel program been completed, i’d not be here today.

Indeed, all behaviors would seem to be entirely obligatory on our part in a determined universe.

But: What determines how we behave? Isn’t it how we think and feel?

But: if how we think and feel is in turn entirely determined, then [it would seem] anything that we come to realize that prompts us to be less inclined to blame is in turn but one more inherent, necessary component of nature unfolding only as it every could have.

From my frame of mind, once you conclude that the human brain is itself just another manifestation of matter unfolding by obeying immutable laws, then everything we come to think, feel, say and do – or come to realize – is but in fact what it could only ever have been.

How can anything be excluded unless you are able to demonstrate that mind as matter is a very, very different kind of matter indeed.

And that leads to discussions of God or how living matter can reach the point where it is able to consciously speculate on why [sans God] there is something instead or nothing at all. And why this something and not another something instead.

First of all, I’m not sure who you are addressing in this post. I hope it’s not me because the discovery I am trying to bring to light is not compatibilism. We have no FREE will and therefore we are not morally responsible. How could we be held responsible if the only choice that was made (looking back in hindsight) was the only choice that could have been made. But amoralism is not the result. In fact, it is not about moral and amoral; it is about what can be justified and what cannot.

The confusion arises due to the word choice. We have options, but it’s never a free choice not because we are dominoes without a say, but because we can never move in a backward direction, or a less preferable direction whenever a choice is being made. Therefore when making comparisons to decide which choice is the most satisfactory, only one choice can ever be made in the direction of greater preference.

The nail was hit on the head. We can never glance back as far as determinism, or the choice made being the only one which could have been made in order to move forward-----implies a pre chosen state of being or mind that has the appearance of having more choices, not of actually having them.

What peace girls is saying, is that appearance changes into reality after a choice was made. That is compatible with the missing parts in the process of reasoning, as to what is the optimal basis of a progressing route whereby choices are made.

Therefore, forward, determination is not absolutely bound by circumstances even beyond our control.

Reversely, a reduction into less symbolic manifestation appears to want to confirm a required sought after priority.

Necessarily, we must choose what nature prescribes is a modal fallacy.

We must necessarily choose what gives us greater satisfaction based on contingent factors that feed into one’s preference is not a modal fallacy. Nature does not prescribe. It is descriptive only.

Well, yes, but isn’t the modal fallacy based on attaining more pleasure basis of primal instincts of survival, and only if survival is described as
more pleasurable then being killed killed by a more voracious Neanderthal, then can we discount the fallacy.