I didn’t say that behaviors are not in sync with the laws of matter or that one is not compelled by the laws of matter.
I’m saying that the way you are referring to the laws of matter amounts to saying nothing at all. When any and every behavior has the same explanation “compelled by nature”, then there is no value to the explanation. You could just as well say “compelled by Pixies” and it would explain just as much as “compelled by nature”.
It’s similar because it accounts for the behavior of the airplane just as much as “compelled by nature” accounts for human behavior - not at all.
That’s why scientists and engineers don’t stop at “compelled by nature”. They look at the details, the patterns, the similarities and differences in situations. Therefore, you end up with a science of flight dynamics. And that’s a useful way of looking at airplane behavior.
If you do believe human behaviors are in sync with the laws of matter – laws that compel them – then what in your own view constitutes a discussion of this that enables someone to reflect something rather than nothing?
Cite some examples of this.
The point isn’t whether I say “compelled by nature” or “compelled by pixies”, but the extent to which one is able to demonstrate that human brains either allow or do not allow us the option to choose one rather than the other?
I must be misunderstanding your point. It is the fact that nature has evolved into life on earth evolving into the human species evolving into the human brain able to grasp the science of flight dynamics intertwined with/in the invention of the airplane that philosophers grapple with in trying to understand such things as dualism.
What are “the details, the patterns, the similarities and differences” that allow us to grasp the distinction between mindless matter and matter able to become conscious of itself as matter either compelled or not compelled by the self-same laws of matter to build airplanes?
The gap in our knowledge here may well be beyond the reach of the human brain.
Configuration of matter A causes behavior X, configuration of matter B causes behavior Y. Etc.
That’s where you actually relate laws of matter to real behavior.
For example, one sees it in studies which show that food intolerance causes behavior problems in children.
But good luck, trying to relate gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces to real behavior.
I’m not writing a PhD thesis or starting a cult or selling a product … therefore, I’m not going to be demonstrating anything. I will be putting out some ideas and examples - things to think about -that’s it.
I’m suggesting to you, and anyone who may be reading this, that there are better and worse ways of looking at these things. I’m suggesting that “compelled by nature” is not a particular good way because it doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s a dead end.
See for yourself how far you can get with it.
I’m not talking about evolution, dualism, or distinctions between matter conscious of itself and mindless matter. I’m talking about determinism and people making decisions.
Does it make sense to think of humans as merely “compelled by nature”? I don’t think so because we can’t relate the fundamental forces to human behavior. We need to think in more abstract terms. That is why it’s useful to think of agents who have choices and who make decisions. We can then figure out reasons for actions, motivations, compulsions that produce particular behaviors in people. This is where we can get meaningful results.
I think this is a good way of presenting a potential position. Here we are in situ, where experientially it seems like we are free, but we can also see ourselves affected by things and even notice that some ‘choices’ or choices seem automatic, even compulsive (a word with the same root as compelled.)
I cannot imagine nailing down a solution (that would convince all rational people, for example) as far as determinims vs. free will. Nor can I see, actually, what good it would do. So for me it is not an important issue.
I have my day ahead of me. I have to make a job related call that might give me some work I would like to have. Fortunately it is not a fully cold call. My way of thinking about this call is a muddle of thinking based on causation - I know they don’t have a lot of money right now and this will likely make them stingy - and me mulling over my options with an implicit belief in free will somewhere in there - as if several futures are possible, as if might go a number of different ways on the phone. I don’t need to make a decision about free will or determinism. I have a bunch of heuristics, just like everyone else, some would seem to indicate I am free - me planning my different options to different questions or obstacles I might meet in the phone call - and some that things are determined - especially when thinking about the callee.
Peacegirl thinks I will be a better person if I believe in determinism. I truly doubt that. I can see it helping on some issues, but also hurting on others. I think a consistant, all the time believing in determinism, will dehumanize. Obviously that doesn’t mean it is incorrect, in fact my concerns are about the believe causing certain negative effects. That the future is bascially laid out already I think will be depressing. Perhap it ‘should’ not be. But humans have tendencies to feel in ways that are not necessarily logical. We are life forms nnot pocket calculators. Some people believe that we will be nicer to criminals once we no longer view their choices as choices. I think the precise opposite effect could take place once we view them as broken machines or creatures with problematic chemical machines in their brains. Once we are seen as, essentially, robots or complicated ‘things’…wait that is often the way we are viewed today by governments,corporations and the pharmaceutial industry. Well, there’s a downside to that.
Perhaps there are good reasons most people more or less black box the issue and if we followed their thinking we would find a muddle of both models chugging along. (note: many of them claim that they believe in free will or deteminism, but I think if we watched their language and investigated their thinking, we would find that in fact they move between the two).
If someone can demonstrate that it is important for us to work it out finally AND can at least make it seem remotely possible, especially for us here, to work it out. OK, maybe then I’ll prioritize working out the solution to it. I suppose I’d be flattered they thought so highly of me ( and then also they think very highly of themselves).
This pops up over and again in these discussions and debates. The same word is being used by everyone, but not everyone “for all practical purposes” understands the meaning of the word in the same way.
That’s when some insist that in order to understand the true meaning of the word we must first pin down the one and only true definition.
Trust me: Five will get you ten that it’s their definition.
But as often as not five will get you ten that their definition makes little or no actual contact with those “for all practical purposes” interactions of flesh and blood human beings.
It becomes basically a dictionary definition that they then use to defend the meaning they give to all the other words they in their philosophical “analysis”.
And, let’s face it, the word “free” is a particular gnarly example of this.
Free in what sense? Ontologically given the understanding of existence itself? Morally and politically given ones value judgments in the is/ought world?
Or, in either context, is it always what the objectivists insist it is?
Okay, but how does that change [if at all] when the matter reconfigures from mindless to mindful. There are the laws of matter involved in the creation of, say, a tornado. These laws propel/compel the matter in and around it to behave only as the matter can behave.
But what of the laws of matter inside the brain of a meteorologist that cause her to predict the behavior of the tornado? Was she determined to to “choose” that forecast, or is there some element of actual free choice involved in opting for one rather can another prediction?
The behavior of the matter inside the tornado…how much more or less “real”/real is it than the behavior of the matter inside the meteorologist’s brain?
But the point of some would seem to be that the laws of matter are inherently intertwining both the biological interactions here in the child’s body and the sociological behaviors of that child interacting with others. Indeed, that our very reactions to those behaviors are no less but another necessary manifestation of the laws of matter.
On the other hand, I will always admit that I am still missing some basic point that you and others make here. I just keep coming back to whether I make it only because nature compels me to.
Exactly. Those scientists exploring the actual functional relationship between “I”, the world of the very, very large, and the world of the very, very small all intertwined in the “four fundamental forces of nature”, haven’t come to any definitive conclusion yet. Let alone alone being able in turn to explain the specific relationship between what “I” does “choose”/choose and a definitive understanding of existence itself.
Okay, but for those who “choose”/choose to take their speculations from the neighborhood bar to a philosophy venue, it would seem expected that they would at least attempt to intertwine those speculations with their own experiences or with what they have perused by seeking out the opinions of those who have attempted [using, say, the scientific method] to grapple with these things less speculatively.
It’s a dead end only because we reach that part where no one seems able to move the discussion to a path that finally resolves the perplexities involved.
But it is surely less of a dead end than suggesting that our behaviors are compelled by pixies.
Or, perhaps, by God?
And what on earth could the latter possibly have to do with the former?
We seem to be in two very different discussions here. Compelled by nature or otherwise.
But human brains are either wholly in sync with those fundamental forces or they are not. How could it not make sense to explore that? The only thing that can possibly make sense has to be in tandem with what in fact is true. And nothing either of us might opine here changes that, right?
Okay, then note particular examples of how discussions of abstract agents have in fact led to meaningful results in explaining the actions, motivations and compulsions relating to the actual behaviors chosen by flesh and blood human beings.
It doesn’t change. Matter produces some sort of behavior in a billiard ball. Matter produces some sort of behavior in a human.
If you are saying something meaningful, then you are describing the relation between matter and behavior.
Again, calling it a “manifestation of the laws of matter” is not saying anything useful. Everything is a manifestation of the laws of matter. So what?
If you aren’t getting anywhere by looking at it that way, then look at it another way. Change your approach.
I’m suggesting things which I learned from my own experiences and from other people. I’m not pulling fictions out of my ass.
You don’t need to think about it very long before you realize that you are not getting anywhere. What result do you have? Anything at all?
What does determinism have to do with people making decisions???
You can look at determinism as involving entirely mechanical interactions where people are essentially the same as billiard balls or dominoes. In that case, they have no choices and make no decisions.
Or you can look at determinism as involving both mechanical interactions(inanimate objects) and agents who have choices and who make decisions. I think that this is the more useful approach.
But you don’t explore it. You don’t go beyond repeatedly saying “compelled by nature”. Exploring requires getting into details.
People are able to apply different levels of abstraction fairly easily. They move seamlessly from “big picture” to various levels of detail and back to “big picture”.
People also usually don’t use binary (true-false) logic. They use multi-state logic where statements have some probability of truth. When presented with contradictory statements, one statement will just be seen as more likely to be true than the other one.
That allows for flexible approaches. One is not committed to only one way of handling a situation. One does not have to “nail it down”.
Yes, one does not have to know answers 100% to live or act in the world. It might be nice to have the answers, but one does not have to wait until one has perfect knowledge to move through life, make choices (or be compelled to act) or say no or yes to things. Unless someone has evidence that we should withdraw from life if we don’t know for sure how we should act or if we are free, we get to participate in life sans a secular or religious Bible that everyone should read and follow.
And sometimes it does not matter. If I found out today perfect proof that determinism is the case, I can’t see how I would look back on the last months and say - oh, damn I did those things - in a sense I am precluded from that concern by deteminism: it had to go that way. And if I found out free will was the case, to 100% certainty, I am not sure at all what the last month would look like to me. I can’t see I would feel regret: oh, I should not have done X or Y. I would merely now know that I could have done other things, which is what it seemed like at the time. And since I am not in this enlightened state I feel no pregret that I will continue to live and strive for what I want (or ‘strive’ for what I want, should striving turn out to have been in some ultimate sense illusory.
Thus knowledge of the world and myself are vastly more important to me than resolving this issue. And yes, that knowledge or even guesses about what is true on a more day to day level about the world and my own inner workings is not binary, it is often what seems to be the case with some probability.
And yes, this leads to mistakes but unless one has a Jesus complex or the like, mistakes are a part of life and I do not think I must be perfect to be entitled to live.
Right. Sticking a label on alters nothing about life. But that seems to be the view of the minority on this site.
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I can imagine deciding one or the other, or believing one or the other, might affect one emotionally, even in ways one would not really notice.
One thing I realized in relation to peacegirl is that there are places in the world where determinism is believed in general as a part of the culture. I don’t think they have avoided abuse, violence and war in these places.
But this seems to presume that the assumptions embedded in the arguments of those who champion free will and those who champion hard determinism are equally compelled by nature’s material laws.
And, if that is saying something meaningful [and, say, actually true objectively] then this very exchange is entirely beyond our control as actual autonomous beings.
Or, again, I am either compelled by nature to misunderstand your point or I do possess a capacity to reason these things through freely by I am unable to match your own reasoning skills. Or my reasoning skills fail to fully grasp the point that you are actually making.
Well, if nature compells me to say that, it doesn’t really matter if it is deemed to be “useful” by yourself and others. Why? Because nature’s laws compel you no less to react to it only as you must.
Right?
But how on earth are we actually able to pin that down?
Thus:
Again, the sort of thing someone convinced that the choices we make are derived from free will, would make. Whereas particular determinists are convinced that in “choosing” to change one’s approach, one is only under the self-delusion that they were free to opt not to change their approach. Human psychology itself being just another embodiment of nature’s laws.
On the contrary, the more you delve into the complexities involved in mindless matter evolving over billions of years into self-conscious human brains the more you come to recognize that gap between what you think you know about all this and all that there is to possibly know about it.
After all, that’s why there are objectivists on both sides of the divide. All of these complexities get reduced down either this or that. They can then claim to know all that they need to know in order to comfort and console themselves.
With or without God.
Okay, note how, “for all practical purposes”, the latter understanding of determinism comes into play regarding your own interactions with others.
Nature’s laws determine your choices but there is a part of what you choose that allows you to be an “agent” that is, what, somehow outside of nature’s immuntable material laws.
Maybe, through this God you believe in?
And how do you go about determining that how you have come to look at it is not in and of itself compelled by nature?
A wholly compelled existential leap, right?
Right, like the assumptions you come back to over and over again in turn does amount to those details.
Let’s try this: In detail, note them then in a particular context in which you choose one thing rather than another.
No examples, of course, just another nudge toward the general description we call “psychology”. In which it is assumed that in regard to your own, some parts of it are embedded in nature’s immutable laws while another part of it revolves around you being an “agent” perfectly able to choose some things…freely?
Are you saying that those who believe in free will are somehow beyond material laws? Or that free will is beyond material laws?
How is that possible?
So what ought to be done now?
If you are compelled not to understand then I have few options … try to explain, ignore it for now, stop talking to you, etc. Decision time.
If you feel that saying “nature compels you” is enough then so be it.
So what if someone calls it “self-delusion”? If you change your approach then you end up on another path. I care where I am, not what someone calls it.
So just to be clear … you recognize a gap, then you “delve into the complexities” and you end up recognizing the gap again and again.
Well, don’t let me hold you back. Carry on.
Who says that it’s “somehow outside of nature’s immutable material laws”, FFS? I wrote in the same post : “Everything is a manifestation of the laws of matter.”
Why do I need to do that? I don’t see you doing anything besides saying “compelled by nature” about everything.
Feel free to present your “explorations”.
Apparently you think that ‘agent’ means not bound by material laws.
I didn’t say that an ‘agent’ is not bound by material laws.
So, how is it finally to be determined/demonstrated once and for all what is really going on “in our head” when we choose one behavior over another in any particular context?
The problem embedded in what some note to be the ambiguities that revolve around “the timing”.
Who is able to show beyond all doubt what plays out when, say, someone enters the voting booth and pulls the lever for candidate X instead of candidate Y or candidate Z.
Is everything already scripted in our brain by the laws of matter, or, instead, is there some “variable” that in fact, does allow for a choice – a real choice – predicated on actual human volition.
In other words, was it nature that ultimately compelled the Russians to hack the 2016 elections in America? Was the outcome already rigged going back to, say, the Big Bang?
I don’t see that you are. My experience and analysis of this dynamic is this.
There is an issue X (conflicting goods, afterlife/no afterlife, determinism/free will, suffering being fractured and fragmented (no ‘I’ or ‘i’).
I see no difference between them in the pattern of dialogue.
Every sentence you write can be treated as you making a failed attempt to refute the existence of the problem
or
as you saying that you have the answer to the issue.
So, if any sentence you write seems to or does disagree with or even frames differently any point he made: you are denying either 1) the importance of the issue 2) the issue itself 3) or are claiming to know the solution.
This allows repetition.
Determinism, as issue, is the closest to an instant short circuit because any conflict or misunderstanding may be compelled.
Even the mere act of trying to explain something to him will be taken as a denial that he
might
be
compelled
to
not
understand.
Or you might not be.
Or as an example of you saying you are free from the laws of the universe.
I’ve wondered what is going on for a long time, since never once does he ever admit that perhaps another person is seeing something in any particular instance of his thinking or interpreting was incorrect, what this was.
I think you are basically talking to his addiction. He is suffering, presenting these issues that cannot be resolved to others, and getting them to try to solve them and having them fail over and over is what he is addicted to.
I used to think this was denied rage. But I just think he is hurt.
He will never admit that he reasoned poorly - in the abstract he will say this is possible, but never once will he say ‘oh, yes, there I reasoned incorrectly’ or ‘there I misrepresented you’. He will always respond slightly askew what you have written. And he will always frame your responses as you making claims you are not making.
Anything else would mean that some other process might make him feel better, that something else is actually causing his pain.
I mean, for years his pain was caused by conflicting goods, and look, that’s gone, at least for weeks now. Now it is determinism. ‘What could possibly be more important?’ The exact same interpersonal dynamic with a new topic. The exact same patterns of misinterpreting other people’s posts.
Well, it could be useful to get a third person perspective. Not arguing for deteminism per se, just saying that one could look at the reasons you chose to travel and the places you when and what made your driving such that you hit no one. So, now you are looking at yourself, in a sense as an object or process unfolding. This could be useful, for example, when comparing you to other drivers. What are Phyllo’s qualities that lead to him not having accidents. Or psychology, what led to the choices he made. This could be within a deterministic perspective where we view it as inevitable (compelled) or black boxing that, but looking at causation.
So, I can see a potential use for essentially assuming implying determinism - or black boxing it - but focusing on the causes.
It seemed like one of your problems with Iamb’s use of the phrase compelled by nature is that is was the full story. That seemed to be the end of the discussion and the end of possible exploration. Not that he would say it was the full story, but that’s as far as his analysis went. Which is not very useful. It also seemed like another problem you had with it was that it was as if this explantion contradicted or was contradicted your explanations, which as far as I can tell it wasn’t.
In a discussion of determinsm, when the only issues are ‘is determinism the case’ and ‘what does this entail’ then it could make sense to say you were compelled, but the next step would be to go in and explain how it should be looked at as compulsion and other ways of looking at it are wrong. I don’t think they are wrong, even if determinism is the case.
IOW even if determinism is the case, it can be useful to speak about things using other frames.