Our Choices

Hello, everyone. I’m new here and this is my first post/topic. So anyway, I wanted to discuss our choices and how we make them. I’ll create a scenario. Imagine a man walking down a street, then suddenly a drug dealer walks up to him and offers the man some illegal drugs for a very cheap price. Now the man has a choice of whether to accept the drugs or to ignore the drug dealer and keep walking. In the long run, the only things affecting his choices and decisions would be his brain and what’s going on in it, and past experiences with other people and or situations. So is it really not that man’s fault if he agrees to the drugs? Since he was born with his type of unique brain due to genes and random transformations, and he can’t control his experiences with the outside world. We can’t really control what we choose, can we? If the brain is the only thing we can supposedly think with, we can’t judge it and say if it’s right or wrong.

I’d like to see your views on this.

You’re not a nox guard from “Beyond Good & Evil” are you? :slight_smile: (Note to Nietzsche fans: don’t get excited, as I’m talking about a computer game.)

Yes, there’s no “responsibility” in an absolute sense (due to there being no free will, whatever that term is supposed to mean), but we should still judge and punish each other, etc, because we’re in the “in game” environment nonetheless.

The man just IS his brain and the choices it makes, so I don’t see why we can’t judge the choices that brain makes as right or wrong. Can you explain why we shouldn’t be able to judge his brain, and, since the man just Is his brain, the man?

It’s not the mans fault, no, and he is not morally responsible, according to determinism.

According to determinist theories every action is predestined, simply following the physical laws of the universe. Determinism postulates that our consciousness is nothing more than a by-product /illusion arising from the brain, controlled and dictated by it.

The implications this has on me are as follows:

I try not to blame anyone for anything. I try to remind myself that it is not their fault, as they could not have done differently.

This means that i find punishment to be immoral. I believe only in rehabilitation.

It’s true the man might have been predestined to buy and sell drugs, it’s not his fault, but he still presents a problem for society which needs to be fixed.

Determinists are not passivists.

The implications determinism has on the idea of choice and free will are as follows:

Choice is an illusion. A choice is when our brain makes a calculation and weighs two or more options, and then selects one…

Calcuators have this same sort of choice, yet we do not think of ourselves as constricted in their fashion.

Most people think of themselves and believe they are alive, they are somebody, that they are greater than the sum of their parts.

It can even go down to what people believe is the nature of the human soul. Determinists say that we have no soul to make us exist, as we function just like robots, and robots don’t have souls.

Freedom becomes something of a stranger, among determinists you always need to put “illusion of” infront of the word “freedom”.

And then determinism leads some people to a sort of nihilism. They think since nothing is changeable or controllable, nothing matters (something like that), they sigh and say that their destiny is a coldly calculated one…

But what has changed since they learned of determinism? Before they ever questioned free will they most likely believed that inside them was great unknown potential, that the future was an exciting and mysterious place… And after they learn determinism they see everything in mono-color… depressing isn’t it?

but again what has changed?

The future is still unkown, still mysterious.

You still think you make choices… What you experience are choices…

With determinism pleasure still feels pleasurable, you can still feel pain…

Being agnostic i sort of run down the line on a few issues… And it’s easy to on this topic, because in my opinion it changes very little.

Yet we do say of human actions that they’re right or wrong. What you mean to say, I think, is that we ought not say of people and their acts that they’re right or wrong…because a theory about the nature of reality puts mans’ acting mechanism on par with, say, a falling rock, in that neither are very much free to do other than what they’re caused to do by forces all around them.

But what if the rock was conscious and moralizing the actions of other rocks, would this too not be caused? Should we judge this phenomenon as right or wrong? I mean, a rock just is, and a rock just does things. Similarly, men think things, and they do things and nothing could be said of them or their actions or ideas.

A determinist wants to say that people ought to act in a different way, in lieu of some truth he’s discovered…but failing to act in the way prescribed by the determinist, what would that mean for the actor? That they’re wrong? That there’s an inconsistency between what they’ve been determined to believe and the manner they’re determined to act? That would mean giving some special credence to thought and reason, with respect to how they influence action, and that is something not in the interest of the determinist.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Well we can’t judge our choices because we make them with the thing that we’d need to judge them with - our brain. I see how you’re thinking though, practically everyone knows that drugs are bad. But choosing what to choose is the thing that I’m trying to say here. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Umm… no, I’m not some kind of guard from somewhere :stuck_out_tongue:. I agree with you that there’s no free will, there might be in a sense that we get to pick what we want, but never true free will.

Determinism sure does play a significant part in this.

I’d like to add that the presence of randomness (at the quantum level or below) can equally be responsible for the lack of free will.

Bollocks. Sorry for being rude, but that’s how I feel about this attitude. Of course it’s their fault, or your fault if it’s you. This attitude can lead to people doing things you oughtn’t naturally, because their belief in determinism can itself be an input into their decisions. For example, a man with a gun might reason: well, I can’t affect what will happen, so I might as well pull the trigger - and BANG!

We’re in the game. We’re as responsible for things as we feel we have free will for them. Cf Radiohead’s answer.

What is the mechanism or the set of rules that determine our chioces
Its our minds that separate nature from culture. Your culture is what makes the diference, the distinctions upon distinctions, the differences of differences and drives your choices.

I don;t think you read my full response…

Determinists are not passivists…

And on top of that the future is not currently predicable to any degree of precision…

I talked about us still having the illusion of choice…

And how determinismcan lead to a sort of nihilism where people claim to see the future, like inn your example…

I do not blame people, and why not… This means people can decide to go around shooting people, saying it’s determinisms fault, and i still wont blame them…

I will however shoot them…

We can only claim things in the past were determined…

Your objection is bullocks…

I’ve read it all now, and yes, I mis-read it (I was in a bit of a hurry). My apologies for that.

But regarding the future, physics says that it’s “there” already (ditto the past) which IMO is a more powerful proof of non-free-will/illusion-of-choice than the-present-based arguments.

The future exists. Some people just can’t see it yet.

Others … can.

You only know when you take the drug. If what that drug dealer was dealing was heroine or crack you would get out of control. If it’s weed you get in control. If you don’t take any you stay how you are.

Yea but you cant influence a rock in the same way you can a man. By giving a man that there is a sense of justice. You influence him to be good. With a rock this is not the case. The minute we start believing we have no control over what we do. We cant act. Sometimes that is. Because it negates a self that can act. Bassically we have to realise that man canot function with truth all the time. We simply were’nt made that way in order to be happy. We have to believe in untruths in order to be a better person and be happier. Those who still are in the process of denying that are still clinging to the egoistical desire for truth.