No, the problem is that, given my own understanding of determinism, I can never not keep repeating it as long as repeating it is wholly in sync with the laws of matter.
So “flaws” are merely built right into this exchange. Whereas in an autonomous universe flaws result from you and I having the actual capacity to get something right…but one of us still keeps getting it wrong.
Now, I’m not arguing that we are either free or not free. I’m merely pointing out that here and now I don’t have access to either an argument or a demonstration that convinces me one way or the other. Why? Because, like you, I don’t have access to a complete understanding of existence itself.
It is not a prerequisite to be all knowing. What you are implying is that we will never know the truth of our nature because no one can ever get close to understanding the meaning of existence itself.
I’m merely pointing out the obvious: That, here and now, neither you nor I can connect the dots between the truth about determinism and the manner in which cause and effect itself is wholly explanable given a complete understanding of existence.
Then the part about the future here is either going to be what it could only ever be or [somehow] human brains/minds have the inherent capacity to shape that future one way rather than another.
Then it is back to be rephrasing that and you being entirely in agreement:
Okay, what aspect of human interaction is not wholly in sync with cause and effect as prescribed by nature?
Nothing. We are all obeying the law of greater satisfaction when meaningful differences between two or more alternatives are compared.
As though our “greater satisfaction” is not in turn a necessary aspect of nature unfolding like clockwork – with or without a clockmaker.
It’s “beyond our control” to be in sync with nature. We “can’t help it”. But somehow that’s not the same as a domino being in sync with it because dominos can’t “choose” to be.
The laws of nature would compel particular brains to define determinism “normally”. Just as the laws of nature compel my brain not to. Just as how your brain defines an “accurate” definition of determinism is compelled by whatever set into motion the laws of nature.
That’s true, your brain is compelled to define determinism one way, and mine another, but they are not that different in the most important sense (i.e., could not do otherwise) and do not have to create a stumbling block.
If there are stumbling blocks how are they not entirely of nature’s making? Again, they are not stumbling blocks in the manner in which autonomous human beings view them. Why? Because autonomous human beings are able to actually get around them of their own volition. They accomplish this, whereas entirely determined men and women merely “accomplish” it.
…nature unfolds such that I was never not able to lead it to water and it was never not able to drink or not drink it. Only the horse’s brain is not able to reconfigure its “choice” into a philosophical quandary like mine “chooses” to.
That is true. Life moves in one direction only (toward greater satisfaction even if it’s just scratching an itch), which is why no living creature has a free choice.
Hmm. That sounds familiar. Just as the points I raise sound familiar to you. So, the “stumbling block” here is either within our capacity to move beyond or it’s not. Meaning that if one of us does make a breakthrough and the other finally “sees the light” it was only because that was always going to be the case.
Nature prevails! Again!!
The only reason the terms are contradictory to you is because you don’t understand how I’m using the term “responsibility”.
And the only reason I was not able to understand how you are using the term “responsibility” was because I was never able to understand it. Nature had other plans. Plans that are reflected only in her immutable laws. Laws that we still have no complete understanding of.
We do have an understanding of determinism. We don’t have to have a complete understanding of all of nature’s immutable laws to understand some of nature’s immutable laws.
If determinism is embedded in that which explains a complete understanding of all of nature’s immutable laws, how can we have a complete understanding of one without a complete understanding of the other? That makes no sense.
Here I keep coming back to this:
It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.
This continues to boggle my mind. All this stuff about “free will” in a universe where the “immutable laws of matter” relect less than 5% of the universe.
Or the multiverse?
Sure, shrug that part off. That’s what all folks who have these grand understandings of all things do, in my view.
For example:
Determinism, the way it’s accurately defined, is one of them. What lies beyond this understanding is fantastic because it has the power to prevent war, crime and poverty on a global scale.
From my frame of mind, it is the believing in things like this itself that propels you into the future. A whole new progressive world if only others would grasp the author’s points. Or, perhaps: If only others could grasp his points. In a world where nature and nature alone decides these things. Ultimately.
All I am showing is that this law of our nature, when applied to our environment, will cause us to veer in a new direction but still in keeping with deterministic law.
That is how I would put it. We veer or do not veer because we must. We want or do not want to injure someone because we must. The consequences are what they are because that is quite simply nature’s way.
Nothing at all that unfolds is other than as nature compelled it to.
True, and as we understand how to prevent conflict and create cooperation, this unfolding is also nothing other than as nature compels it to be. Today, some want to injure as they must. Tomorrow, they will be compelled to not injure as they must. Same nature, but veering in a different direction as it must.
How we both agree and disagree about the very same things! That’s what fascinates me. In many ways, you reflect what I imagine a wholly determined universe is. But then we imagine the consequences of it in very different ways.
The future is as it must be but it must be more progressive if nature compells enough people to read the author’s book. This makes sense to you in a way that does not to me. I’m not saying that you are wrong, only that I still have no capacity [autonomous or not] to grasp it here and now.
Thus:
Others are compelled to either read [the author] or not. But either way, the future [like the present] is already inherently a continuation of the past. Once nature’s laws set us in motion we are only ever going to “choose” what must be.
I’m having difficulty with this because what you are saying in so many words is back to having no choice because nature (as if nature is something other than ourselves) is forcing our choices. Obviously, the future is a continuation of antecedent events, our heredity, and our experiences.
I’m not arguing that men and women here on earth don’t choose behaviors that propel the future in one or another direction, only that in a determined universe as I understand it here and now, they have no option, no capacity to actually choose anything other than what nature’s laws compel them to “choose”. At least in our 5% of the universe.
Not only am I compelled to “choose” not to read it but I am compelled in turn to note that your own assumptions regarding “peace and brotherhood” in the future are just existential contraptions, rooted in dasein and conflicting goods. And, as well, in the assumption that we do have some measure of autonomy in choosing to understand them as we do.
Man has the ability to think, to create, to observe, and to discover. Call it autonomy if you like. The label you give it doesn’t matter. It’s the reality behind the label that counts. I’m not sure why you call the claim that peace and brotherhood are within our reach, just assumptions. You have no basis for this comment other than your opinion and your belief that peace is impossible. You are dead wrong.
From my frame of mind, to say that human beings have the capacity to think, to create, to observe, and to discover is merely to acknowledge that you were compelled to think, feel and say that here and now. And that, in turn, how I and others react to it is no less compelled by the laws of nature. And that whatever I call it I was never able to not call it. And thus the “basis” for all of this is determinism.
And I’m not saying that peace is impossible. I am merely pointing out that it will be predicated on those who have the capacity to enforce particular sets of behaviors in particular contexts.
Hitler might have conquered the world way back when and the world war would have been over. Peace would prevail.
Not what some would call a “progressive” peace, but peace none the less.
But in an autonomous universe we would at least have the capacity to judge that peace from conflicting moral and political narratives. Whereas in a wholly determined universe Hitler was no more flawed in his thinking than those who fought against him.
The Holocaust simple was what it could only ever have been.
And it is the implications of this that [I would imagine] most deeply disturb the free will folks among us.