Determinism

Free Will Is An Illusion, But Freedom Isn’t
Ching-Hung Woo says freedom is compatible with choices being determined.

Cue “compatibilism”. Which, try as I might, I am never able to reconcile with the manner in which I construe the existential relationship between determinism and value judgments “for all practical purposes”.

I’m not arguing that they are wrong, only that, so far, I am not able to grasp why [or how] on earth they are right. And even here I can only presume that [somehow] I do have the capacity to choose this. But if that is the case there is no need to speak of compatibility at all.

But: I do know where they will then take the exchange. To the argument that peacegirl comes back to time and again:

Ever and always it comes down to how you have come to understand the meaning of that word even though from my frame of mind you come to understand it ever and always as nature compels you to.

Something happens. Something happens because of the behaviors that I chose. I am therefore responsible for what happened because had I not chosen the behaviors that I did it would not have happened.

That is compatibilism?

Again: Huh?

It makes no difference how complex the intertwined factors are. It makes no difference that I am not able to untangle them in order to assess cause and effect in any particular context. It matters [to me] only that I either had some capacity to choose these behaviors autonomously or I did not.

This was explored in the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:

[b]A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping.

But she had forgotten her coat and went back to get it. And when she had gotten her coat the phone had rung and so she had stopped to answer it and talked for a couple of minutes.

And while the woman was on the phone Daisy was rehearsing for that evening’s performance at the Paris Opera House.

And while she was rehearsing the woman was off the phone had gone outside to get a taxi.

A Cab comes to a stop she moves to get it but somebody gets there first, the cab drove off and she waits for the next one.

Now this taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee.

He picked up the lady who was going shopping who had missed getting the earlier cab.

The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did because he forgot to set his alarm.

While the man, late for work, was crossing the street making the cab wait Daisy, finished rehearsing, was taking a shower.

While Daisy was showering the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package which hadn’t been wrapped yet because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before and forgot to.

When the package was done being wrapped the woman was back in the cab but the taxi was blocked by a delivery truck.

All the while Daisy was getting dressed.

The Delivery truck pulled off and the taxi was able to go while Daisy, the first to be dressed, waited for one of her friends who had broken a shoelace.

While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out of the theater.

And if only one thing had happened differently…if the shoelace hadn’t broken or the delivery truck had moved moments earlier or the package had been wrapped and ready because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend or the man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier or the taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee or the woman had remembered her coat and had gotten into an earlier cab…

Daisy and her friend would have crossed the street and the taxi would have driven by them.

But life being what it is, a series of intersecting lives and incidents out of anyone’s control, the taxi did not go by and the driver, momentarily distracted hit Daisy and her leg was crushed.

Her leg had been broken in five places and with therapy, and time, she might be able to stand, maybe even walk.[/b]

Of course Daisy’s leg was no ordinary leg. It was the leg of a world renowned dancer. And now, because of these “intersecting lives and incidences out of anyone’s control”, her life was forever changed.

And this works the same for all of us, of course. We think we are free to go about the business of living our lives autonomously. But how exactly is this point to be determined?

In a large sense our intertwining lives are akin to countless balls on a gigantic pool table. We zig and zag, caroming into each other in ways no one can truly grasp. Yet we can potentially create havoc in another’s life simply by stepping back into our apartment to retrieve a coat.

You and Brian are like…brothers. Same quality of mind.
you’re like him, in twenty years…when Godo’s footsteps are heard on the door step.
Brian is version you, 2.0. Next generation nihilist.

Until peacegirl returns [compelled or not], I’ve sort of taken over this thread [compelled or not].

And [compelled or not] I’ve enacted a No Kids policy.

It’s an existential contraption, true, but that is rooted in my assessment [compelled or not] of “I” as the embodiment of dasein.

I gave you a chance [compelled or not] on another thread to demonstrate that you have the capacity [compelled or not] to approach philosophy more [as I like to put it] substantively.

You either do or you do not.

And that’s either compelled by the laws of nature or [somehow] we really do possess the capacity to opt for alternate arguments.

If so, then it’s your, uh, choice?

Wow, an ultimatum.

The outcome can be predicted.
A slew of repeating sentences, not veering off a script. A loss of my time, on a hypocrite, and an inevitable surrender to nature’s failed experiments.

I’ll leave you with this.
Nothing is inherently good/bad, but only in relation to an objective. Your refusal to admit that your objective is parity and subjugation to a collective, makes you a thinker of bad faith. A waste of time.
The only acceptable answers will b those that promote your objective, without admitting it.
Marxist utopia.

Better one from me, than one from nature.
Right?

In a wholly determined universe [as I understand it], things are only able to be predicted if there is a God; or if there is a teleological component to nature in a No God world that [obviously] has not been pinned down by mere mortals; a predictive component embedded in the laws of nature that is embedded in turn in a definitive understanding of existence itself.

On the other hand, that slew of repeating sentences is predicated solely on the assumption that mere mortals here on planet Earth do possess some measure of free well. Then the distinction I make is between that which is able to be demonstrated as true objectively for all of us [in the either/or world] and “personal opinions” rooted in dasein in regard to acquiring, assessing and then judging the moral and political values of others [in the is/ought world].

Here, however, I require the discussion to be illustrated. By being embedded descriptively in an examination of the relationship between conflicting goods out in a particular world [ours for example] pertaining to a particular context. Which I always allow the objectivists among us to choose.

I’ve already addressed this with you on the universal truth thread:

To which you responded…

As for the Marxist utopia, I have long since abandoned that rendition of objectivism. I merely note the extent to which Marxism is a vital component in regard to the role that political economy plays in our lives.

Nil is powerful.
The utopia of the all-levelling nil.

Note to others

What does he even mean, within the contexts of how I define nil?
More mental contraptions.

The only acceptable answer is:
We are all equally ignorant, so why not come to a common compromise where we all benefit, and stop all this fighting?

Under the one-god - who is known by many names - are we not all sinners?

We’ll need a context of course.

Note to others:

What on earth is this supposed to mean in the context of, among other things, our exchange here:

Is he going to address this substantively or not?

In regard to gun control or a subject of his own choosing.

Note to others,

Some minds become rigid, inflexible, and calcified. At this point in their life, they cannot bend but break and shatter. Handle appropriately.

We’ll need a context of course.

You choose it.

You know, assuming you have the autonomy necessary not to choose the one that nature compels.

Iambiguous wrote:

"But not before the existential trajectory of our lives largely determine the objectives embraced by any particular “I” out in any particular world understood in any particular way.

Then it comes down to differentiating that which one is able to demonstrate is true for all rational men and women and that which largely remains, subjectively, a “personal opinion”.

This is very fitting with simulated understanding of what it means in terms of subjective trajectories constructing objective standards within a diminishing spatiotemporal phenomenal world.
Beyond and beneath the present epoch, the distinction between them will become less distinct, and all humanity must involve in that new brave world, that will determine and reduce it’s distinctive features, until they become indistinct.

That realization proports to simulate it’s self toward constructing such objectives. The threat of a non objective world is axiomatically nil, and simulation regains it’s objective existential criterion .

That is the mode by which the ‘i’ escapes from it’s freedom.

It’s basic Abrahamic fatalism transferred into secular forms - i.e., fatalism.
We are all images of the one-god, so its order, its will, is confused as belonging to us.

It chooses. and we are its agency of choice, ro the chosen.
Simple shift in jargon.

In Christian lore, free-will is given, but prohibited to be exercised. It’s like a taunt a test of loyalty.
A method of explaining why an absolutely ‘good benevolent omnipotent, omniscient god’ would allow for ‘evil’ to exist.
It is implied that the ‘evil’ is man’s free-will, and this is what he must make amends for by surrendering it, willingly, to God’s only permissible Will.

A mind-fuck.
I apologize to Mowk the language officer.

.

From my frame of mind [and that’s all it is, my own personal opinion], this one sentence alone encompasses the gap between you and I in regard to philosophy as a tool in which to explore human interactions.

Again, unless you are only being ironic in posting here, this sort of thing is just intellectual gibberish to me. How would one embody it as use value, as exchange value, in any particular context. How do you do it?

Not that I’m not compelled to point out that you are compelled to make this point.

It’s all inherently tricky [if not surreal], isn’t it?

In other words, merely asserting this to be true makes it true. Why? Because he will assert in turn that he just [b]knows[/b] that he was able to freely choose to assert it and not something else.

Still, we need a context in which to explore it further. Abrahamic fatalism in what sense? Given what particular set of circumstances? And how would this relate to that which is of most interest to me regarding determinism: moral responsibility.

That’s not an argument countering what he wrote.

If one looks at Christianity, there are sects which strongly believe in free will and sects which are fatalistic.

I would say that the vast majority is in the free-will camp.

Don’t know who is being quoted there…but I’ll play along.
Maybe, I say maybe, the entire narrative about Adam & Eve and how God gave the ‘free-will’ was really a way of explaining how an absolute one-god, that made all in his image, would be capable of creating evil.
Read the story.
He gives a gift, called ‘free-will’ and then places a restriction upon it - so automatically it isn’t free at all, because his will usurps theirs.
A way of forcing them to sacrifice their will to his, because freely exercising it comes at a severe and absolute cost: infinity of suffering in Hell - loss of Paradise, a.k.a. Garden of Eden.

That’s would be like telling inmates in a penitentiary that they are free, to do and go anywhere…except outside the prison, and that if they ever dared to go outside that they would be sent to an eternity of isolated confinement.

Notice the prohibited fruit, representing awareness. So, remain obtuse and ignorant, and you can do anything you like.

The Christians realized the self-defeating implications of their description of God as omnipotent and omniscient and man made in his image, so they had to come up with a reason to blame man for evil.
The Serpent, Satan, is a representation of Prometheus.
Through this bullshit story, man is made the cause of his own suffering, and the root of the evils he must suffer and make amends of.

Free-will, properly understood, is not absolute, nor is it a method of self-absolution, because ti begins with placing the blame on one’s self, even for not correctly understanding the nature of a friend, a trusted ally, who turns on you.
The first one to blame is self, for choosing and for failing to choose.
Choice is the pragmatic expression of freedom. It isn’t some abstraction, defined in prose and poetics, nor is it non-existent, because ti is experienced - observable, testable, falsifiable.

Every choice participating in the determination of one’s own future options.

So your argument is based on your interpretation of a Bible story rather than how Christians have historically interpreted it and applied it.

Yes…Christians are brainwashed. They are told what to think.

It appears the Bible is pro-family and pro-life, and pro free-will but it is not.
Consider the other narrative from a pragmatic perspective.
A wandering preacher, wannabe Messiah, goes around taking young males away form their families, which at the time was a severe loss that risked their survival. Consider the symbolism of God - the idea - usurping the father as head of the family.

You can google anti-family quotes. I did a while ago, but I can’t be bothered in this forum.
I’m here to have fun, in this circus.

But you can research yourself.
Biblical allegories imitated ancient Oracle decrees - a form Nostradamus also adopted and many charlatans - some that come to this forum - have sued to imply insight and mystical powers and predictive powers.
The form uses allegory to appear ro be saying something when ti is saying nothing, ro to appear to be saying one thing when ti si saying the exact opposite.
Three layers:
Text
Context
Subtext

Three layers of meaning, corresponding to body/nervous system/mind and/or physis/motive/metaphysis, past/present/future.

The Bible is an anti-family text.
The males - fathers - are mere representations of the on true father. Males are not real fathers, but means for the one-father to seed his female concubines - mediators.
Consider the story of how Mary got inseminated…a rape scene, that makes Joseph a cuckolded husbund.

Christianity, therefore Abrahamism, is Absolute Tyranny, as-if there were one (Male) Ruler over humanity forever.

This is an abstraction and impossibility of course. Abrahamic ideologies ‘solve’ the Paradox by extending it beyond life, or beyond “one Ruler”. So, when any living embodiment or representation of ‘God’ may possibly exist, it doesn’t matter, because “God” is beyond life (immortal). Thus the ideology is representational. And all humans are forms of and degrees of impostors.

I interpret Abrahamism as how Jews originally viewed the Roman Caesar and imperial class, Aristocracy. It was their (per)version of it. To them, at the time, the Rulers could do pretty much anything they wanted to them, after being conquered. And so, refusing the foreign rule of the ‘earthly’ Graeco-Romans, imitated and copied the Rule, as an idea, which then could be inverted and reversed. So rather than being emasculated and accepting the foreign rule, Jews created their own Aristocratic class (the Cohens) and also inverted the Roman Imperialism and title of Caesar (God), to suit and fit themselves. They then convinced other slaves and victims of their “One-God”, as a means of subversion against the early Roman Empire, and then later as subversion against the Roman Catholic Diocese. This is a (memetic) battle that’s been waging for Centuries.

Romans were not the first people to conquer Jerusalem and enslave the Jews, too. The Egyptians were before the Romans, as were the Persians, from whence the Zoroastrian and Monotheistic elements were taken and absorbed into Judaic and then Abrahamic ideology.