This then cues my point about how human wants and human satisfactions are in turn necessarily rooted in the human brain necessarily rooted in nature necessarily rooted in its laws of matter.
Then around and around and around and around and around we go. Necessarily in other words.
Until nature compels you to reconfigure your argument into something that makes this part go away nature will continue to compel me to react as I do now.
Ironically, our only hope then is that we actually are autonomous beings able of our own volition to rethink each other’s points.
Thus:
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.
You are incorrect. You and me may not be able to communicate, but that does not mean the truth of determinism cannot be understood. I maintain that this concept is not only wholly explainable but extremely significant.
I’m not arguing that. Again, what is considerably more obvious to me than to you is that an understanding of determinism is inherently embedded in an understanding of existence itself. And no one seems able to explain existence here and now. And you and I will be long, long, long dead and gone if and when it ever is.
Unless your “progressive future” includes a life for “I” after death. Does it?
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.
We cannot separate ourselves from the laws of our nature. There is no way we can escape our heredity, environment, experiences, predispositions, life circumstances, where we were born, our culture, etc. which in turn influence our choices each and every moment of time. But you cannot say that these things “caused” you to make a choice. They created the conditions that led you to desiring one choice over another.
From my frame of mind [and “for all practical purposes”] this is still a difference without a substantial distinction. Either way you are only able to say that I am only able to say that these things “caused” me to make a choice. Instead, from my frame of mind, given a determined universe, nature caused me to make a “choice”.
And then I still have no way in which to determine definitively if I either do or do not have any measure of autonomy in noting this.
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.
You’re right, it makes no sense. Who in the world said that determinism is that which explains a complete understanding of "all of nature’s immutable laws? It is true that the universe is not a free for all, but again the understanding of what this means in terms of our nature does not mean we are not free to choose that which we want, not what nature (as you place it) demands or forces upon us.
Let’s just say that we are talking past each other here. You make these claims regarding what is true about the universe when science points out that only 5% of universe as we know it today contains the kind of matter that might be subject to immutable laws. Including our brains.
You insist you don’t shrug this part off but then you go on to make your claims anyway. Like the only thing in the universe that really matters here is the stuff that we make claims about on earth. Then you ask me to please stop making my own claims as though this is something that I am actually able to accomplish of my own volition.
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.
That is true but why keep repeating it? You’re preaching to the choir.
And yet given my very point here I was never able not to keep repeating it.
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.
This was not a true call for peace. This was a power play due to Hitler’s ideological beliefs and using the Jews as a scapegoat. It could not have been any different but that does not mean the same scenario in the here and now has to occur again since we are all changing our perspectives about the causes that lead to brainwashing on a large scale.
From my frame of mind, you are speaking of historical events here as though the participants were able to choose a “true peace”, but, instead, like Hitler, “chose” a false peace. As though had the author of the book written it decades before the Nazis, the Holocaust might not have unfolded at all. Why? Because the right people might have “chosen” to read it and stopped the fascists in their historical tracks.
Or, sure, I am still just utterly confused about it all.
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.
I get that. It’s not a matter of being flawed in the deepest sense knowing that the Holocaust had to occur based on the sign of the times. The world was ripe for such a happening. Hitler has now become a symbol for evil. The truth is that he
could not have chosen any differently than what he did. The author of Decline and Fall of All Evil was a Jew yet he was
quite clear in his understanding that Hitler and his philosophy of hatred against the Jews was based on his
ability to find a scapegoat.
If the truth is “he could not have chosen any differently than what he did” how then were the Jews not fated by nature to be sent to the death camps? Surely, what would be construed by many of us as more horrible than the Holocaust itself, is the possibility that it is but one teeny, tiny manifestation of nature unfolding only as it ever could going all the way back to the Big Bang. Utterly “beyond our control” as wholly determined men and women.
The same nature that permits the most heinous crimes, and
all the other evils of human relation, is going to veer so sharply in a
different direction that all nations on this planet, once the leaders and
their subordinates understand the principles involved, will unite in
such a way that no more wars will ever again be possible.
This is simply unbelievable to me. He is telling us that in the future nature will shift gears and be entirely in sync with his own “progessive” assumptions about human interactions — as though nature itself would have no choice in the matter.
Another reason that war is viewed as an
unfortunate and intractable aspect of human existence is due to
suffering itself, which sadly robs its victims of the ability to dream or
have the breadth of vision to even contemplate the possibility of peace.
The evil in the world has so constricted man’s imagination that his
mind has become hardened, and he shows contempt for anyone who
dares to offer a solution because such claims appear ludicrous and
unfounded.
How are his perceptions of evil not entirely in sync with his brain being entirely in sync with the laws of matter being entirely in sync with human interactions [past, present, future] being entirely in sync with nature unfolding only as it must like clockwork.
Again, with or without the clockmaker.