On the other hand, those who necessarily refuse to accept your own definition of determinism argue that you were never able not to point this out. And, my being so confused about how you necessarily came to your own definition of it myself, I’m convinced that you’re one of them!
The entanglements here are in my view more about the use of language than the manner in which the language that we use is able to be demonstrated as in sync with our actual behaviors. Stuff, that, among others, Wittgenstein was pointing to.
I just take it back to the gap between the language that we use here in this exchange and the language that would be needed in order to explain how human interactions on this infinitesimally tiny speck of existence that English speaking folks call Earth are intertwined.
Which nature then conplels you to dismiss as, what, incidental?
If the immutable laws of nature are behind every single interaction between matter – that which I understand a determined universe to be – the domino not “choosing” to topple and the human brain “choosing” to topple it are necessarily intertwined in the only reality able to unfold in sync with those laws.
The true mystery [for me] is how matter evolves into human brains actually able to confront human interactions self-consciously. As “I”. “I” amidst the antinomy that is built right into dualism. We simply can’t explain that yet. Or, rather, no one has successfully explained it to me.
You keep wanting to make this distinction between “being able to make choices that comes from within, not from without” as though that which does come from within the human brain is somehow connected to realty in a way that is different from how all other matter is connected to it. For most this means God. But for you it means an understanding of nature that in my view you just make up in your head. Your own rendition of nature as God.
But, in my view, only because you were never able not to – given my own understanding of determinism. Which I have no way of demonstrating is true either.
It has been fascinating philosophers for centuries now. But some [like you and the author] are, in my view, able to concoct “discoveries” that not only explain it all but project into a future finally brimming with “peace and properity”.
But this is still part of the mystery of minds actually able to create psychological defense mechanisms that sustain some measure of comfort and consolation. Some are able to concoct these intellectual contraptions in their heads that fit all the pieces together into a foundation solid enogh in their heads to anchor “I” to. For most of course this all revolves around religion and God. But not for everyone…
I am stuck where nature sticks me. And that precious “definitional logic” you cling to is apparently where nature has stuck you. At least until nature itself gets around to being in sync with the author’s discovery. As though that’s the way it actually works! The author has necessarily given nature a route to peace and properity here on planet Earth. But will nature finally get it? Not unless enough folks come around to his own understanding of all this. Even though they too are all stuck where nature puts them. If only from the cradle to the grave.
Here we go again. You seem to acknowledge that my insinuations about the author, like the author’s discoveries themselves, are all at one with nature unfolding only as nature must given the universal laws that propel/compel it.
Yet you demand that I stop doing this with precisely the same inflection one would expect from someone convinced that I do have the autonomous capacity to stop.
Now, maybe others on this thread can explain this to me as you would like me to understand it. Indeed, maybe nature itself will at last compel to me to understand it next week or next month.
But, here and now, freely or not, I don’t understand it at all. In fact, your arguments often seem completely unintelligble to me.
Stuff like this:
All of this is entirely based on the assumptions that you make about the definitions that you give to the words here. You have not given me any substantive evidence that all rational men and women are in fact obligated to believe it.
You simply need to believe it yourself in order to sustain both the equillibrium and the equanimity that propels you into this progressive future.
But my own words here are in the same boat. I am no less unable to demonstrate my points. All I can do is to follow the folks who do grapple with these issues/relationships utilizing such things as the scientific method to explore the actual functioning of the human brain in the act of choosing.
No, once again you merely assert this to be the case while offering no substantive arguments/evidence to back it up. What you won’t do in my opinion…if, autonomously, I even have one…is to consider why it is so important that you believe this. The reasons that I suggest above.
Thus…
And around and around and around we go. Or, rather, around and around and around we must go.
Culminating [necessarily] in this:
See, nothing gets through. Maybe nature [per her laws] will one day compel me to reconfigure my definition. Or maybe any of the defintions that any of us give to it are only and always the ones that nature compels us to give it.
But what comes through clearly to me is this deeply engrained psychological need on your part for others to accept that how you deconstruct and then reconstruct determinism re the author’s “discovery” is actually more a manifestation of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Only I have no way of knowing if this is not too just another inherent manifestation of what can only ever be.
It’s the part where I reconfigure “I” into an existential contraption here that most perturbs the objectivists of your ilk. Or so the nihilists of my ilk take our own profoundly problematic leap to.
No, as I understand determinism, I am using whatever defintions nature compels me to use. Here and now.
Indeed, in my view, that is what is most important to you here. By your definition of determinism, we can still call particular behaviors “heinous crimes”. By your definition of determinism those crimes become a thing of the past in our “progressive future”.
It’s how you are able to actually think yourself into believing this that continues to escape me. As promethean75 noted elsewhere, that’s what the discussion of free will really revolves around: morality. In other words…
Being able or not able to hold others responsible for the things they do.
Somehow in your head you want and you get it both ways. No free will…but evil is still around.
But when I try to bring this all down to earth…
…you take it elsewhere.
What if, what if what if. How does any of this actually address the point that I am making? Different folks along the political spectrum have different [very, very different] narratives and political agendas regarding government and conflict.
What then?
How is nature itself with its immutable laws of matter not the program behind both? How is the program and the causal function of nature not one and the same here?
Over and over again you insist [from my frame of mind] that we take what we want to do out of the loop. As though the laws of nature do not compel some to think that what they want to do they want to do of their own volition. While others are compelled to believe that they “choose” to want what they do.
If everything gets done only as it ever can get done then everything is wholly in sync with nature itself.
Again, this speaks volumes regarding that which I construe to be behind the author’s “discovery” here. The psychological impetus. Everything gets invested in this “future” where human beings interact as they were always meant to interact when they are finally in sync with God as nature.
That’s the part “in your head” that you can nestle down in while the real world continues to clobber all the rest of us in all manner of insufferable contexts.
Hey, but if that works for you, isn’t that all that really matters? Indeed, maybe my own sour reaction here is just a manifestation of my own yearning to think myself into something just like it.