Determinism

That is exactly what peacegirl thinks is going to happen and he is glad about that.

And he also agrees with that.

And he would agree with that.

And his telling people this, he thinks, might be part of those causes and effects which inevitably lead to people moving past blame.

It might lead to that. It might not. I don’t see it always leading to that.

(something gives me the impression peacegirl is a man. I can’t remember what it was. apologies if I’m incorrect)

oh my GOD… peacegirl is a man?! gah… uhhhhuh!

I think we are both missing each other’s point . My point is, an answer to Yours that sure, we are advancing toward some object through which the pleasure principle leads us, unto the Freudian Thanatos , however at a point. a pre reflexive point , man has sublimely passed into the age of a myth, and then everything changed.

He started.to bury his kin, with a sublimination of some hidden expectation that this appeaewmt appearent death is not real, that there is something hidden-look at the burial of the body. as an act of.literal hiding it, preserving it, from lower forms of life.

He has gone into the world of the myth. the mythical world of the imagination.

This is very significant, it is a form of transplantation, from the world of the senses.

Pleasure is not restricted to human beings, animals feel pleasure in coitus, but that pleasure, produces the seed without which evolution, could not proceed to posit the idea of choices.

The primal point revolves against the existential solution to mortal threat- advance to fight or retreat , when two primal combatants face each other.
What determines the action that needs to be taken?

The pleasurable feeling of over coming an assailant caused by the perpetuation of that pleasure . Higher pleasures evolve as the become more objectively associated with more cohesion with more ideally formed attachments.

The point is the evolving identification of pleasure in the other as object, begins with a naturally determined evolutionary determination, exactly as You describe it. The based of which are existential, and not cognitive. However the basis only address the behavioral responses to changing forms of adaptation with and within a genetic code. The code supplies the unanswered question, which in that early age was unanswerable. This is the foundation of the tranacensentally reducible answer as to why and how the instinctual basis determine the connection of the pleasure principle with the content of the objective notion of Thanatos: which even to this day remains shrouded .

The supposition that more and more will be revealed, with the passage of time, is again implied with the upper notions of transcendental evolution, and it is for that hope, that science is a servant of. The overcoming of this tragic birth, as progressing from the representation toward the reality of objective truth, as an absolute. We have come very far indeed sin a few centuries , while primitive, yet hopeful man goes back in time maybe 50 to one hundred thousand years. It is a pleasure to understand the coming of near perfect compatibility between what is presented and what is hoped for, in order to avoid the tragic consequences of passing from this tragedy into some kind of self fulfillment that is able to interpret the code to its ultimate goals.

The ultimate is feared with every new incarnation, perhaps working reversely, due to an increasing impatience with the rate of change , since the imposition of the break up of Thetic consciousness has lot the ability to appreciate the literal miracles which have transmitted closer and closer into the very code it’self.

[quote=“Meno_”]

Meno, I don’t quite understand how your explanation nullifies the immutable law of greater satisfaction. You seem to be using your philosophical analysis to discuss motives. This is not about motives. It is one statement of fact ONLY! Could you be more succinct and tell me exactly where this natural does not hold? I already stated that’s this is not the pleasure principle because we do many things that are unpleasurable (like saving another human being at the risk of us dying in the process) but give us satisfaction.

peace girl,

Meno, I don’t quite understand how your explanation nullifies the immutable law of greater satisfaction. You seem to be using your philosophical analysis to discuss motives. This is not about motives. It is one statement of fact ONLY! Could you be more succinct and tell me exactly where this natural does not hold? I already stated that’s this is not the pleasure principle because we do many things that are unpleasurable (like saving another human being at the risk of us dying in the process) but give us satisfaction.

Philosophical analysis is supported by palaanthropological facts here.

Personally I would severely discount my pain by an extreme pleasure of saving someone’s life.

But here is the rub, the conversion of neurological pain into psychological pleasure.


Could you be more succinct and tell me exactly where this natural does not hold?

In cases of tightly half morally encompassing duties, where the imperative to act invalidates the archaic notion of preservation of the self toward a motiveless leap towards the preservation of others. That is not based on an instinctual state, and here
the fallacy becomes auspicious.
But that too can be phenomenally transcended by an indirectly determined natural method. Do the modal fallacy may be transcended by the same token by which Jesus spoke in parables and Nietzsche in aphorisms.

Many people would do the same, but I would not call it pleasure. That’s misleading.

You are, once again, trying to negate this law by bringing in irrelevant factors. What motivates you to choose psychological pleasure over neurological pain may not be what someone else chooses. This doesn’t disprove the “greater satisfaction” principle. It proves it. This principle cannot be denied, which is proof that man does not have free will because he can only go in one direction.


Our instinct for self-preservation may be replaced by the desire to help someone else in an emergency situation. We may act counter to our instinct in a situation that requires it. Where does this nullify anything I’ve said?

It’s not a fallacy. That is a mistake on your part. We are compelled to choose the greater of two goods, the lesser of two evils, or a good over an evil. It is impossible to choose the lesser of two goods, the greater of two evils, or an evil over a good. You have not shown me an example where this principle fails. Looking back in history only confirms that man never had free will because his actions were necessitated by the urgency for survival during that time period. Self-preservation is the first law of nature yet there are exceptions when a dire situation calls for a person to sacrifice his well-being for the well-being of another.

Before, during or after something happens. Before, during or after anything happens. What parts here [including human interactions] are not embedded in matter unfolding only as it ever could have in a wholly determined universe?

What can we know about something, about anything in a wholly ordered universe that we were ever free not to know? or free to know in a different way?

Well, we make choices and then once that happens, we can’t go back and unmake them. That part is certainly the case.

Hitler chose the Final Solution. That is a historical fact. But was this choice a historical fact only because he could never have not chosen it? That of course is what is at stake here. If everything the human brain as mindful matter chooses is always in sync necessarily with the laws of matter, then when folks blame Hitler for acting in an atrociously immoral manner, that too is just an inherent manifestation of a wholly determined universe.

And when some imagine that as having appalling implications for human interactions that too is just more dominoes toppling over as nature marches on.

Our consent. Our choice. And, yes, those autonomous aliens note that most of us are convinced that we are giving our consent to the choices we make.

But who perhaps is fooling themselves here about the nature of that consent, those choices? The “compatibilists” with their “psychological freedom” embedded in an ontologically determined world? Those like peacegirl who seem obsessed that no others force us to choose what nature compels us to choose? Like in not forcing us to choose others have freely chosen to do that!

Or, yes, yes, yes, it’s me here. I’m just not getting what is crystal clear to others about the existential relationship between determinism, the human brain, the human mind and the choices it makes.

[quote=“peacegirl”]

Many people would do the same, but I would not call it pleasure. That’s misleading.

You are, once again, trying to negate this law by bringing in irrelevant factors. What motivates you to choose psychological pleasure over neurological pain may not be what someone else chooses. This doesn’t disprove the “greater satisfaction” principle. It proves it. This principle cannot be denied, which is proof that man does not have free will because he can only go in one direction.


[quote=“Meno_”}In cases of tightly half morally encompassing duties, where the imperative to act invalidates the archaic notion of preservation of the self toward a motiveless leap towards the preservation of others. That is not based on an instinctual state[/quote]
Our instinct for self-preservation may be replaced by the desire to help someone else in an emergency situation. We may act counter to our instinct in a situation that requires it. Where does this nullify anything I’ve said?

It’s not a fallacy. That is a mistake on your part. We are compelled to choose the greater of two goods, the lesser of two evils, or a good over an evil. It is impossible to choose the lesser of two goods, the greater of two evils, or an evil over a good. You have not shown me an example where this principle fails. Looking back in history only confirms that man never had free will because his actions were necessitated by the urgency for survival during that time period.[/quote peace girl

peace girl:
You have a knack for. revealing prima facea paradigm
The fact of choosing good over evil exactly examplifies the struggle between Chirst and the Antichrist between Jesus and Nietzsche, even though the latter washed his hands by pronouncing himself to be above it!(good and evil)

Here is a decision to be made!

These were Pontius Pilate’s exact words.

Good and evil are relative terms although most people would consider not being shot by a sniper to be good when compared to the evil of being shot.

I think this comes closest to my own frame of mind here. In the manner in which I have come to understand the nature of determinism [though, sure, I may well be wrong] [b][u]nothing[/b][/u] escapes the clutches of mother nature’s immutable laws.

There are our desires. And these desires propel/compel us to feel greater satisfaction about certain things. And this sense of greater satisfaction about certain things propels/compels us to choose different behaviors.

But how is this not all “as one” to mother nature? Then the crucial question becomes teleology. Is there a God behind it all? Is there as aspect of nature [going back to the existence of existence itself] that allows for something analogous to “meaning” and “purpose” in the lives we live?

Such that someone like peacegirl can speak of things like peace and prosperity and progress “in the future” as though mere mortals here and now can actually pin them down? Or in fact have any actual freedom here at all in effectuating these changes?

Though I am the first to admit that human autonomy may well be applicable here. But that however is when I introduce dasein, conflicting goods and political economy into the is/ought world.

So, naturally, most folks are likely reject my frame of mind. I’m either suggesting that nothing that we think, feel, say or do, is not “beyond our control”; or I’m suggesting that even if we have some control, “I” in the is/ought world is largely an “existential contraption”.

Unless of course I’m wrong. And, come on, given the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known, what are odds that I am actually right?!

I merely suggest in turn that this is applicable to others here too: the objectivists, the nihilists, the naturists, the deontologists, the Kids, the serious philosophers, the ranters and the ravers…everybody.

They are embedded, but they are contingent on antecedent events. IOW, the choice we make cannot be dictated until the choice is made. That would be a modal fallacy.

What we know and what we don’t yet know is perfectly ordered. We were never free not to know or to know in a different way because there was no other way it could have been in a wholly determined universe.

I don’t like the domino example because we do get to choose (albeit unfreely) dominoes don’t.

We are giving consent to the choices we make.

I’m not obsessed iambiguous. Nature does not prescribe behavior, which implies that we must choose what it dictates. Nature is not a dictator.

You’re making it more difficult than it actually is.

“Good and evil are relative terms although most people would consider not being shot by a sniper to be good when compared to the evil of being shot.”

Ok good and evil are relative nominally, but, as far as their connexion to how to choose between them demands more dynamic involvement with the sources and the outcome of determined effect of the outcome of the choice, and I think a lot of confusion may arise by the appearant rather then the structural understanding. Is this why sometimes we are condemned to be fated to make the wrong choices?

what we are now experiencing is a derridaian state of the aporetic, an impasse generated from an unusual bewitchment of language… when language is forced out of its ordinary environment into the philosophical landscape. chances are, all of you are meaning the same thing… but using the signifiers (words) differently. i think we should take a break from this discussion for a while, collect our marbles, and come back to it later, refreshed and renewed, ready to enter again into the same linguistic entanglements…

What does it mean to “beat around the bush” with regard to questions this problematic?

What “point” do you expect someone to get to?

In fact, my whole point here is that both the beating and the bush are profoundly problematic.

Obligations?!

I’m suppose to actually know that?! When, over and over and over again, I situate discussions like this in the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known.

Until you come closer to understanding that as I do, it is not likely that I will ever stop beating around your own rendition of the bush here.

Well, the one I tend to focus on is abortion. It’s literally a life and death issue that is well known to almost everyone.

Here there is cause and effect/correlation in the either/or world: life on earth—> human biology—> sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> abortion.

Whereas cause and effect in the is/ought world is [in my view] predicated more on what I construe to be existential contraptions. And they are often considerably more subjective/subjunctive.

But: From my way of thinking, in a wholly determined world, this distinction is essentially an illusion.

But if you cannot grasp the distinction I do make here between the either/or and the is/ought worlds given some measure of human autonomy, we need to spend more time pursuing that. On another thread perhaps?

Here and now I basically agree. Why? Becasue scientists/philosophers have yet to fathom the extent to which human autonomy is in fact an aspect of human interactions.

So, until they do fathom it, we have to take these discussions [over and again] into realm that encompasses [more or less] a world of words.

Right, like beyond the “world of words” that is bursting at the seams with all the assumptions you make here, you can actually know this!!

But as I recall on another thread I asked you [at least I think it was you] to take these suppositions to the hard guys delving into these relationships in the hard sciences. I believe you noted that you would attempt this and get back to me.

Yes, I make the assumption that mindless matter evolved into mindful matter here on earth because both actually do exist side by side. And that’s one possible explanation. Another is God.

And how in a wholly determined universe is anything at all free? Instead [given my own assumptions] we have mindless matter on earth evolving into mindful matter able to in fact “choose” things that nature compels them to. But: are our choices really any different [for all practical purposes] from the choices made by animals further down the evolutionary chain? They choose almost entirely by “instinct”. Our species however has encountered all manner of historical, cultural and experiential variables that come into play. The part where genes intertwine with memes.

How then is this to be understood?

Or the pertinent question might be that, if rational and irrational beliefs are all subsumed in the fact that beliefs themselves are wholly determined, what does it really mean to make this distinction at all?

And this is situated in the either/or world. One is blind or one is not blind. Something is construed as a legitimate demonstration here or it is not. Red might be conveyed to blind person as associated with heat or passion, blue with coolness and calm. The communication is always either more or less effective. But: in a wholly determined universe it is what it is. Period. It could never have been other than that.

Again: How on earth can you ever hope to demonstrate that this is in fact true for all rational/logical folks beyond merely asserting that it is something that you believe is true here and now “in your head”?

There really is no confusion if we define how we’re using the words beforehand. Free will in regard to the free will/determinism debate means that a person could have done otherwise if we were to rewind the clock. Determinism means that we could not have done otherwise because there is only one choice that could be made at any given moment in time. Determinism does not mean, in the way it is correctly defined, that we necessarily must do anything that is prescribed by nature. It only means given our particular circumstances, we are compelled to choose what gives us greater satisfaction rendering all other choices an impossibility. Free will therefore is an illusion, although a convincing one.

We don’t always have all the information available to us to know how our choices will turn out in the short or long term. You can say we were fated to make the wrong choices but you can also say we were fated to make the right choices. Looking back in hindsight teaches us what works and what doesn’t, which is how we grow.

Questions like this are existential contraptions in my view. So, the answers are likely to be in turn. I’m certainly not arguing that what I think this makes you is that which all others ought to think in turn.

And, on this thread, the part where anything that we exchange here might be construed to be the only thing that either one of us ever could have chosen to post. Letting us both off the hook.

Okay, but what is the likelihood of misunderstandings being cleared up when you flat out insist you will not even read the points that I make?

In cases like this all we can do is point out particular instances of it. And then [over time] decide if our own rendition of it warrants moving on to others.

But there is in turn [in my view] that murky middle. The part where someone insist that others are not responding to their points when what they really mean is this: if someone were responding to their points they would be agreeing with them.

The question bolded above, my question, both?

So you were not saying, via the question, something like 'well, we see why this guy does this? ’ Right? You were actually asking a question, or?

Letting us both off the hook is pretty vague. We can still draw conclusions. For exmaple. You seem to know what it says about me that I said I would not read your response. I then wrote why I did that. You’ve now read that. Did it have any effect. Or do you still think you know why I wrote that. Did it affect the degree of your certainty?

It can seem as if we are not just determined in the moment, but as if nothing we do will affect each other. It seems like when I explain my motivations it has no effect on your certainty or conclusions. Determinism lets you off the hook, in the sense that you and I cannot but do what we do. But if you are unaffected by information, one could describe you as that kind of person. We can still be described.

And determinism does allow for change, in fact it claims it must take place. Not necessarily what changes or how fast.

As I have said. One of the reasons I find your posts frustrating is that you often do not seem to respond to what I write, to the points I make, and often shift the context as if what I wrote was, for example, my claiming to have solved the problem of conflicting goods. I wanted to try letting you know I would not respond, on the chance that this would shift the way you would respond.

I mean, whatever you think of me, I certainly hope that y ou’d agree that over the course of our communication, I have tried many times in many different ways to explain my thinking to you, to point out where I think you are misunderstanding or mischaracterizing me. Here you asked people to judge me by a much less used pattern and determine what I am like. I think I have a fine motivation for this latter choice. But it is as if I had not tried a wide range of approaches over a long period of time.

Hey, what’s this guy like, look what he just did. Seems kinda facile to me.

Agreed. In the past though you wouldn’t even respond. You would call it psychobabble or serious philosophy or would call my dealing with concrete instances of our communicative interaction as not grounded and ask me to weigh in on abortion.

I pointed out that that is not as concrete since I am not dealing with that issue, but our communication is an act we have documented here, and is in fact an interaction we are the two parties involved.

I don’t remember you ever admitting that I was right. Now you seem to get it.

Sure that’s a possibility in human interactions. And following your own point above, it would have been good in all our communication if you had tried to demonstate how my wording seemed to indicate this added conclusion. But you would just label me that way. Or label a large section of a post as indication I assumed you would agree with me if you actually focused on what I wrote.

So ideas about what might happen get written as if they are the case. With disclaimers, but never with any argument for why you think it is true in this particular case.

I also have seen other people make similiar criticisms of your posts. Now of course we all know many even most people can be wrong. But I have no seen you ever actually try to get to the bottom of that criticism to see if there was any validity.

You called my entering into this discussion with peace girl my ‘setting you straight’ with the connotations that go along with that phrase. My sense was I saw where you were talking past each other. And, in fact, I believe you or perhaps it was peacegirl asked people to try to mediate. So I did.

IB: Note to others: What does this tell you about him? And he’s done it before. He jumps into a thread, “sets me straight”, and then abandons the discussion.
SD: We were discussing earlier what obligations one has to discussions. How do you see it?
IB: Again, on this thread, it’s not how I see it, but whether the manner in which I think I see it [here and now] is but an inherent, necessary manifestation of the laws of nature unfolding only as they ever could have.
SD: Well, assume it’s not determined and working within that context, how would you see it?
IB: 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.
SD: 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?
IB: What does it mean to “beat around the bush” with regard to questions this problematic?

Jordan Peterson? Is that you? lol

All that word salad in avoidance of the question is what it means. My sympathies to the restaurant staff who must take your order lol. “My order? What would I order in an either/or/ought/is world of conflicting goods where “I” is embedded in deterministic laws of nature rooted in existential contraptions where I could only ever order what I was going to order anyway?” :laughing:

sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> abortion.
sex—> ectopic pregnancy—> surgery.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> birth.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> miscarriage.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> miscarriage.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> mother dies in freak accident.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> mother dies in freak accident.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> mother commits suicide.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> father kills mother in fit of rage.
sex—> no pregnancy—> woman hit by train.
no sex—> pregnancy—> christianity is born.

Where the electron will be is not predictable. Outcomes are not predictable. Rewind it and it will unfold differently.

Right.

I get the difference, but I don’t get why you keep saying it.

Well, they’ve exhaustively proven there are no local hidden variables determining outcomes, so either information can travel faster than light (ie can arrive before it left and see itself off) or there are no determining causes. Pick your favorite absurdity. And because it’s so weird, it’s the most substantiated fact in all of science.

How can you not know it?? If atoms are nonlife and you’re made of nonlife, then you are nonlife… unless the pixie sprinkled some magic dust making you alive.

No that wasn’t me. Sounds like KT.

The ceramic and fully-automatic models of the universe are both absurd.

If the universe is wholly determined, how could you possibly be aware of that? Determinism can only be realized in the context of freewill.

Geese get pissed off, jealous, proud, egotistical, depressed, yet don’t have the brains god gave a goose lol. It’s possible that plants could experience emotions in ways we don’t understand. Heck, it could be possible to piss of the earth. How far do you want to take it? All you are is chemicals; star dust shit.

If that were the case then you couldn’t ask because you couldn’t exist as anything more than a dumb machine.

Why are you so hungup on pre-determinism? It’s contrary to science and contrary to common sense. It could never only have been other than that.

How do I demonstrate red to a blind man? If you can’t see that existence isn’t a thing that can exist, then I’m out of ideas of conveyance. I don’t know what to do.

Indeed, and she – he? – might argue in turn that this post of yours is exactly what could only have been posted in sustaining this thread. But that somehow it is important to note that you “chose” to post it. Even though there was never any possibility that you could have chosen not to.

No one forced/compelled you to. Other than the laws of nature compelling others not to compel/force you?

Glad. But only because she was never able to react in any other manner. Her “choice” to be glad is necessarily subsumed in the reality of nature unfolding only as it must. Given the manner in which I construe the meaning of determinism.

She agrees with all of the points that I make but she still “chooses” to back away from our exchange. And this makes sense to me only to the extent that she seems able to convince herself that I am in fact to blame for not agreeing with her. Really to blame because I should have “chosen” to agree with her.

It simply doesn’t make any sense to me.

Again, she thinks only that which she was ever able to think here. And in my view she has no way given that assumption to know what on earth the future will bring in the way of peaceful, prosperous and progressive policies here on earth.

Instead, she can avoid altogether dealing with my own understanding of human interactions [re dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in an autonomous is/ought world] by falling back on determinism. But a determinism that somehow predicts a brighter future only if others will finally come around to her and her author’s way of thinking. As though they are still somehow to be blamed if they refuse to see the light.