Free Will... Again

[Jakob]

@RealUn

This thread is mostly aimed at @promethean75 and his absolute resistance against Free-Will and absolute support for Cosmic Super Magic Spinoza Determinism. But of course all are welcome and encouraged to participate.

How can a person possibly “take responsibility” for something, for an object, over another person (like your own biological child), for an event, etc.? To “take responsibility” for a set of events, for example, is similar to, or the same as, “making a choice”. But how can this action of “taking responsibility” or “making a choice” possibly occur? Inevitably, to the Absolute Determinist, all such notions must be reduced to mere illusions. They are forms of coping of the individual psyche of the person. Human beings, thinkers, any organism with a brain, merely wants to ‘pretend’ to Power. No organism is actually Powerful. No organism is actually capable of Power.

There is NO actual “will power” to the Determinists, except perhaps, only in Self-Delusion.

And this is the basis of power and existence to the Determinists. What humans call “you” or “I” are merely our self-conscious experiences, our consciousnesses “along for the ride”. We can never actually change the course of the ride. We are stuck along a supposed one-course track. And if any organism had the power of foresight or accurate predictability, then it would foresee where all tracks lead. It would be able to see this supposed “Absolute Determinism”. Therein, to Determinists, only an Absolute God would have “Choice” or be able to “take responsibility”, but none else. It’s not a matter of degree. It’s a matter of absolution.

You can either change the whole universe, for all time, or you can do nothing.

So which is it, promy boy?

There are those such as Zeroeth Nature who believe that the world is will to power, and who are also hard determinists who don’t believe in agency.

Challege to Zeroeth Nature viz. Self-Lightening

Interesting! I will try and elaborate my own perspective on this. Firstly, I’m reminded of this passage: “You had to learn to grasp the necessary injustice in every For and Against; to grasp that injustice is inseparable from life, that life itself is determined by perspective and its injustice. Above all you had to see clearly wherever injustice is greatest, where life is developed least, most narrowly, meagerly, rudimentarily, and yet cannot help taking itself as the purpose and measure of t…

I do not think there is a contradiction between determinism and taking responsibility. An organism can be determined by its brain chemistry to adapt his actions to what it perceives is of benefit to someone/something else, thus “taking responsibility” for that other. Whether we think this person actually has an absolute existence as discrete entity is semantics. Prom acts in his own perceived self-interest, whether that self or self interest absolutely exists or not. His perceived self-interest does influence his actions. So the self-interest, be the self merely a perception or an actual thing, is a thing. Like god, whether there is an entity of that sort or not, at the very least exists as a motivator for a lot of peoples actions. So he does exist as an influence. Which, if we go by James S Saints theory of existence=affectance (that which has an efffect) would amount to his proper existence.

@futureone

I don’t know if free-will exists.

Free will is different than responsibility. For instance if a killer robot kills people, the question is not “did the robot have choice”. It is irrelevant if a philosopher determines robot has free-will or not. There are simply actions and then consequences for those actions. The robot would probably be taken to the garage and reprogrammed and given more beta-testing and QA.

Its only in primitive backwards human societies that supposed Christians have some kind of vendetta against prisoners and want prisoners to suffer. Prisons are a place of boredom which causes madness. It is wholly irrational. They are causing madness on dangerous persons and then letting them out on society.

In socialist countries with more prisoner rights they actually have less crime and recidivism, so the hardass arguments all fall apart.

Yes, in Finland a cell is a nice appartment with tv and a view on nature. And there is indeed very little recidivism compared to the US where prisoners, so Ive heard, even if they are quite innocent when they come in, are expert at crime when they come out.

The difference, besides the general economy which is far more hospitable to people of lesser capacities in Finland, is that in Finland the priority is to rehabilitate the convinct, to turn him into a decent and well adapted being, whereas in the US the priority is to punish. As a result the prisoner, if/when released, has strongly diminished chances in life and is more ikely to come back to crime. By the way this is not a question of Socialism vs Christianity. Try prison in Venezuela.

“Man cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short … there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.”
― Joseph de Maistre

Here’s an interesting observation on American prison.