# thoughts on determinism
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220
**Category:** Philosophy
**Created:** [May 24, 2023, 3:27pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220 "2023-05-24T15:27:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 29
### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/561 "2024-11-06T03:16:35Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> That’s what it all comes down to, right? The part where brain scientists either do or do not reach the point where they can demonstrate step by step by step what really does go on inside my own brain as, say, I type these words. Is it my brain just doing its thing wholly in sync with the laws of matter or is there an “I” in there that transcends the neurological and chemical interactions in order to create an actual autonomous being.
Click, it seems nothing will change this fantasy of his. If someone else said something like this, Iambiguous would likely respond with
On the other hand,
Actually,
On the contrary; “All of this going back to how the matter we call the scientists’ brain’s was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.”
Iambiguous doesn’t realize that when he imagines a future scenario where scientists demonstrate or actually ‘demonstrate’ determinism or free will is the case, this ALSO would be determined in determinism. Further he, the reader or listener to the scientists, would also be determined. So, the determied scientist might think they demonstrated free will was the case (or determinism for that matter) but actually they too were merely compelled.
He loves to say the following:
[quote]The point some hard determinists argue is there is nothing at all that we think, feel, say or do, that we were ever able to freely opt not to.[/quote]But for some reason he thinks this doesn’t apply to situations where scientists reach conclusions or he about the conclusions he thinks they have reached.
You can’t point out such absurdities and meet - no response at all - and then the silly not applying his own arguments to his own conclusions assertions just continue.
IOW he likes to dismiss other people’s positions using certain lines of arguments that apply to his own positions, even after this is pointed out.
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2024, 5:53am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/562 "2024-11-06T05:53:44Z")
Perhaps we can conclude that he doesn’t know what compatibilism means, he doesn’t want to know what compatibilism means, these threads are not attempts by him to understand compatibilism nor invitations for you to discuss compatibilism with him, they’re more like a journal talking about feelings, and… the end.
Let him have his feelings journal.
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### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2024, 6:22am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/563 "2024-11-06T06:22:05Z")
> [@Flannel\_Jesus](#):
>
> Let him have his feelings journal.
I really want to do that, but determinism compels me to point out the contradictions in his posts. Even when you point out the futility of doing this, and on examination of your point, I agree, for some reason this **cause** does not affect me, just as pointing out his contradictions does not affect him. 😆
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2024, 11:39pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/564 "2024-11-07T23:39:19Z")
Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik
> [@](#):
>
> As early as the 1960s, studies found that when people perform a simple, spontaneous movement, their brain exhibits a buildup in neural activity—what neuroscientists call a “readiness potential”—before they move.
Okay, this is either true objectively or it’s not. But if it’s true only because it was never able to be false…? Someone moves as they do because they were determined to move that way. But this determination itself may well be but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.
> [@](#):
>
> In the 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet reported this readiness potential even preceded a person’s reported intention to move, not just their movement. In 2008 a group of researchers found that some information about an upcoming decision is present in the brain up to 10 seconds in advance, long before people reported making the decision of when or how to act.
And since then? The research has either come closer to confirming this or it has debunked it more in favor of autonomy. Any links from anyone here?
> [@](#):
>
> These studies have sparked questions and debates. To many observers, these findings debunked the intuitive concept of free will. After all, if neuroscientists can infer the timing or choice of your movements long before you are consciously aware of your decision, perhaps people are merely puppets, pushed around by neural processes unfolding below the threshold of consciousness.
On the other hand, what’s the “for all practical purposes” difference between being one of nature’s puppets and one of nature’s dominoes? Back to all the technical distinctions made between determinism and fatalism, between external forces and internal components, between compatibilism and moral responsibility.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2024, 12:37am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/565 "2024-11-10T00:37:47Z")
Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik
> [@](#):
>
> But as researchers who study volition from both a neuroscientific and philosophical perspective, we believe that there’s still much more to this story. We work with a collaboration of philosophers and scientists to provide more nuanced interpretations—including a better understanding of the readiness potential—and a more fruitful theoretical framework in which to place them.
How about this…
At least once a year world renowned scientists and philosophers get to together to share their assessments and their conclusions regarding free will. Or is this actually a thing now already?
On the other hand…
> [@](#):
>
> “The conclusions suggest “free will” remains a useful concept, although people may need to reexamine how they define it.”
What does it mean for “free will” to remain a useful concept if concepts themselves are no excception to the immutable matter rule? Same with definitions. The first thing to be done is to establish that when we do define something we really did have the option to define it otherwise.
You can examine and reexamine many things…over and over and over again. And you might even change your mind over and over. But that is hardly proof of free will. Conceptually or otherwise.
> [@](#):
>
> Let’s start from a commonsense observation: much of what people do each day is arbitrary. We put one foot in front of the other when we start walking. Most of the time, we do not actively deliberate about which leg to put forward first. It doesn’t matter. The same is true for many other actions and choices. They are largely meaningless and irreflective.
But: does that make them autonomic? Or, perhaps, sort of autonomic? On the other hand, it hardly seems to be arbitrary. Our feet walking is clearly not the same as our heart beating. Or, in fact, are they exactly the same…to nature?
One take on it: [https://youtu.be/gxeK-KYvibc?si=dwV2vXKMLxEYl6ey](https://youtu.be/gxeK-KYvibc?si=dwV2vXKMLxEYl6ey)
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2024, 1:32am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/566 "2024-11-12T01:32:50Z")
Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik
> [@](#):
>
> If we start working with a more philosophically grounded understanding of free will, we realize that only a small subset of our everyday actions is important enough to worry about.
Not counting any number of men and women for whom small subsets of everyday actions are not important enough to worry about.
> [@](#):
>
> We want to feel in control of those decisions, the ones whose outcomes make a difference in our life and whose responsibility we feel on our shoulders. It is in this context—decisions that matter—that the question of free will most naturally applies.
Unless, of course, you’re convinced that in a wholly determined universe, decisions that matter, much like decisions that don’t, are all just another necessary component of the only possible reality.
> [@](#):
>
> In 2019 neuroscientists Uri Maoz, Liad Mudrik and their colleagues investigated that idea. They presented participants with a choice of two nonprofit organizations to which they could donate $1,000. People could indicate their preferred organization by pressing the left or right button. In some cases, participants knew that their choice mattered because the button would determine which organization would receive the full $1,000. In other cases, people knowingly made meaningless choices because they were told that both organizations would receive $500 regardless of their selection. The results were somewhat surprising. Meaningless choices were preceded by a readiness potential, just as in previous experiments. Meaningful choices were not, however. When we care about a decision and its outcome, our brain appears to behave differently than when a decision is arbitrary.
Yes, some [compelled to or not] will read this and it’ll be enough to [compelled to or not] convince them that at least in regard to the really, really important decisions made in their lives the fact that brain does function differently, well, what else could it be?
How many additional experiments of this nature confirmed it?
Besides, from my frame of mind, even if it turns out that, in regard to the truly important things in life, we do possess at least some measure of autonomy, we’re still confronted with how much of that is rooted existentially in dasein. For example, those in America who voted Trump back into the White House may well have done so of their own volition. But that doesn’t change the subjective/subjunctive political prejudices that brought them to this choice.
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### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [November 12, 2024, 2:02pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/567 "2024-11-12T14:02:10Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > If we start working with a more philosophically grounded understanding of free will, we realize that only a small subset of our everyday actions is important enough to worry about.
>
> Not counting any number of men and women for whom small subsets of everyday actions are not important enough to worry about.
I suppose there are some people who don’t care about any decisions they make, but I’m not sure what bringing these people up does to shed light on the topic.
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> Unless, of course, you’re convinced that in a wholly determined universe, decisions that matter, much like decisions that don’t, are all just another necessary component of the only possible reality.
I think even hard determinists prefer to feel in control, whatever metaphysical position they are taking. And there brains would show a different process when dealing with different kinds of decisions/choices. We have actions we perform more or less on automatic, without thinking, such as putting on a sock. And there we have the readiness potential. But with other decisions where the issue matters more to us - and perhaps more complexity of thinking is needed - we don’t have the readiness potential that was crucial in the Libet experiments.
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> Yes, some [compelled to or not] will read this and it’ll be enough to [compelled to or not] convince them that at least in regard to the really, really important decisions made in their lives the fact that brain does function differently, well, what else could it be?
So, far they haven’t explained why this difference means that there if free will. All they’ve done, so far, is counter the way Libet’s experiments have been used to ‘dispove’ free will. What he found and decided showed that we actually didn’t consciously make choices is not universal to decision making and performing actions. So far what we have is a counter to Libet’s argument agains free will or the way his experiements have been used against free will. And it does a nice job against that line. Does is prove metaphysical free will? So far the article hasn’t shown us.
But one thing it makes a case against, in addition to the Libet line, is the talking about being compelled. The ‘my brain compelled me’ and similar metaphors way of talking about this area.
It doesn’t really make sense to say that, because it sounds like we are not our brains or our brains are not us. If there is compelling going on, we are compelling as much as anything else.
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> Besides, from my frame of mind, even if it turns out that, in regard to the truly important things in life, we do possess at least some measure of autonomy, we’re still confronted with how much of that is rooted existentially in dasein. For example, those in America who voted Trump back into the White House may well have done so of their own volition. But that doesn’t change the subjective/subjunctive political prejudices that brought them to this choice.
If the issue is determinism, rather than moral realism, then it doesn’t matter if the cause are objective or subjective, they’d still be causes. So, this ending is mashing together two issues and acting as if free will if it existed would mean one would have to be objective. I’d need to see the argument for that.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2024, 9:31pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/568 "2024-11-14T21:31:32Z")
Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik
> [@](#):
>
> Even more interesting is the fact that ordinary people’s intuitions about free will and decision-making do not seem consistent with these findings.
On the other hand, ordinary people’s intuition about free will and decision making may well be as inherently embedded in the only possible reality as the findings of those above.
> [@](#):
>
> Some of our colleagues, including Maoz and neuroscientist Jake Gavenas, recently published the results of a large survey, with more than 600 respondents, in which they asked people to rate how “free” various choices made by others seemed. Their ratings suggested that people do not recognize that the brain may handle meaningful choices in a different way from more arbitrary or meaningless ones. People tend, in other words, to imagine all their choices—from which sock to put on first to where to spend a vacation—as equally “free,” even though neuroscience suggests otherwise.
Ever and always, however, when conducting a survey and publishing the results, there’s no getting around this: click.
In other words, the assumption must be made that in doing things of this sort, you are doing it of your own free will. When all the while you have no way in which to establish this neurologically and chemically.
> [@](#):
>
> What this tells us is that free will may exist, but it may not operate in the way we intuitively imagine.
Whatever, say, for all practical purposes, that means? How might it be made applicable to Mary and Jane? Jane was always going to be toast, even though as of yet we don’t know exactly how Mary’s theoretical autonomy plays a part in it?
> [@](#):
>
> In the same vein, there is a second intuition that must be addressed to understand studies of volition. When experiments have found that brain activity, such as the readiness potential, precedes the conscious intention to act, some people have jumped to the conclusion that they are “not in charge.” They do not have free will, they reason, because they are somehow subject to their brain activity.
Few things are more mysterious [to me] than human intuition. We think things and we feel things. And then “somehow” over time these thoughts and feelings coagulate into this deep down inside me “I just know” certain things are always true or false. That, however, the entire experience here might be but one more necessary manifestation of the only possible world…?
Out of the question!
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### Author:  [@greenfuse](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/greenfuse)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2024, 1:33am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/569 "2024-11-15T01:33:19Z")
> [@iambiguous](#):
>
> Ever and always, however, when conducting a survey and publishing the results, there’s no getting around this: click.
>
> In other words, the assumption must be made that in doing things of this sort, you are doing it of your own free will.
I would say most scientists are determinists. So they do not share your sense that one must assume one is doing the research, for example, of your own free will.
Could you explain why they must be doing if of their own free will. And what what ‘must’ means. They must assume free will for it to be correct? to have confidence in it?
If it is one of those (or really whatever it means) could you justify this assertion?
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2024, 12:33am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/570 "2024-11-17T00:33:55Z")
Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too
New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect
By Alessandra Buccella & Tomáš Dominik at sci/am
> [@](#):
>
> But that assumption [above] misses a broader lesson from neuroscience. “We” are our brain. The combined research makes clear that human beings do have the power to make conscious choices.
On the other hand, is that the same thing as saying human beings make free choices? Day fter day after day, over and over again, we clearly make choices. And we know that others makes choices in turn because from time to time we have to deal with the consequences.
And while we all have brains, we didn’t choose the one we have. And the one we have may or may not become conscious of the fact that after thousands of years, we are still unable to definitively pin down if the choices we do make we make of our own volition. Some here will choose to argue that others are fools if they don’t agree with their own assessment and conclusion. But it’s always only a more of less educated guess given The Gap and Rummy’s Rule.
> [@](#):
>
> But that agency and accompanying sense of personal responsibility are not supernatural. They happen in the brain, regardless of whether scientists observe them as clearly as they do a readiness potential.
Here, however, even scientists are unable to demonstrate that God does not exist. And until we pin down conclusively what human existence is naturally, we have no way of ruling out whatever the supernatural might be.
> [@](#):
>
> So there is no “ghost” inside the cerebral machine. But as researchers, we argue that this machinery is so complex, inscrutable and mysterious that popular concepts of “free will” or the “self” remain incredibly useful.
I can live with that. In fact, that’s my point: I have to.
We all do. There’s what we think we know about “I” out in the world. And there’s how that is embedded in all that we do not know about that, at times, “complex, inscrutable and mysterious” nature of…of what exactly?
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2024, 2:16am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/571 "2024-11-20T02:16:44Z")
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia
> [@](#):
>
> But what if every one of our actions is actually out of our control? That is, what if only seems as if we have the freedom to choose between actions, but we are in fact as undeserving of blame as, say, the severely mentally ill?
This is perhaps what disturbs many the most about determinism. If none of us do have free will then all of us may well be just toppling over onto each other like so many dominoes. Really, if both the genuises and the severly mentally ill among us are autonomically in sync with the only possible reality, what does it mean to blame or to credit someone for the things they did? They did only what they were compelled to do and we reacted to it only as we were ever able to.
> [@](#):
>
> There are many philosophically interesting answers to this question, and they deal with some famous and famously difficult problems surrounding the concept of free will.
Of course, the concept of free will is little more than a world of words. Words defining other words such that their meaning never seems to come down out of the conceptual clouds themselves.
While for all practical purposes…?
> [@](#):
>
> The concept of free will brings with it the idea that at least some of our choices are ours alone— we are fully in control of them, and therefore we are fully responsible for them. Free will is the basis for moral responsibility, or so many have argued.
Which, perhaps, is why compatibilism is still beyond my reach. How can someone never not do something but still be held morally responsible for doing it? Other than the possibility that those who either do or do not hold another responsible are themselves reacting only as they ever could,
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2024, 8:28pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/572 "2024-11-27T20:28:00Z")
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia
> 1. Libertarian Free Will
>
> Those who claim that we have libertarian free will argue that we make free choices when it is possible that we could have done otherwise than what we actually did. When this condition obtains, we are justified in blaming (or praising) the person who made the choice, i.e., holding that person morally responsible for the action.
Yep, there is little doubt that if “somehow” we did acquire autonomy, this makes sense. Nor is there much doubt then that if we possess free will, we are responsible for the behaviors we choose. But then there are few objectivists who won’t insist further that their own One True Path is all you need to know about that.
And of course, the flagrant assumption among any number of Libertarians that the One True Path revolves entirely around laissez-faire market capitalism.
> The idea that we possess free will…has a lot of intuitive force behind it, but philosophers have struggled with the question of what could allow for free will in the face of concerns about the causal laws of the world.
In other words, in a No God universe. And, in a No God universe, material interactions are either explained given one or another assessment of Pantheism or “somehow” given the Big Bang the Human species is now just along for the ride. From where? To where? With God teleology is built right into existence itself: God’s will.
But no God and meaning and purpose are just all that much more elusive and mysterious.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2024, 2:45am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/573 "2024-12-01T02:45:17Z")
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia
> Hard Determinism
>
> Hard determinists appeal to the causal laws of the world in order to challenge the claim that we have free will, in the sense of ‘free will’ that both they and libertarians accept.
How about we settle this once and for all by carefully defining what all rational men and women are truly obligated to mean by “hard determinism”. The most logically and epistemologically sound meaning in other words.
By, of course, simply rejecting the possibility that in defining things, we are for all practical purposes no less compelled to by our brains to do so.
> [@](#):
>
> Everything that happens can be fully explained by the causal history of what happened before. Though it seems as if we have choices, it is always the case that, for any choice we are faced with, only one of the seemingly available paths will ultimately be taken, and the other paths were never truly available: we cannot do otherwise.
That’s the “thing” for many here. The assumption that “somehow” when bacteria and termites and squids and apes evolved into us, we acquired those “internal components” of “mind” that permit us to “just know” that we could have opted otherwise.
It’s the fact that over and over and over again we are confronted with the reality that human beings do make choices. So, they must be autonomous.
> [@](#):
>
> To suggest that we have free will is to suggest that we are somehow outside of and unaffected by the causal chain of events—that we can be the sole source of our actions—and the hard determinist argues that this is unsupported by facts about how the world works.
Right. How the world works given the fact that we really have no definitive understanding of how and why existence itself “works”.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 8, 2024, 7:39pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/574 "2024-12-08T19:39:14Z")
Free Will and Moral Responsibility
Chelsea Haramia
> Revisionism/Illusionism
>
> The power of these intuitions of responsibility cause some hard determinists to argue for a revisionist approach. They accept that appeals to moral responsibility are theoretically unjustified, but they nonetheless assert that we are pragmatically justified in accepting the illusion that people actually have moral responsibility, because practices of praising and blaming are still useful, and abandoning them could lead to chaos.
This is the part where, in my view, “here and now”, I tend to reconfigure these folks into what I call the “free-will determinists”. They’re determinists, sure, but “somehow” their own human intuition has convinced them that for “pragmatic” reasons holding others morally responsible can be seen as, what, the real deal? That, in other words, all of the truly hardcore determinism stuff just goes too far?
Still, just because particular hard determinists are able to come to this conclusion, doesn’t change the fact that their very own brains remain entirely in sync with the “immutable laws of matter”. In other words, they came to this “revisionist” conclusion the same way in which they came to every other conclusion in their life: as but an inherent manifestation of the only possible world.
On the other hand, it’s also the part whereby I am able to admit to myself that this may well actually be the case. I am just unwilling or unable to grasp it “here and now”.
Well, click of course.
> Incompatibilism
>
> Finally, there are those who maintain that determinism and moral responsibility are utterly incompatible.
And, of course, there is absolutely no way in which “those” folks were not themselves wholly compelled to maintain this, right?
> The libertarian can then tout this incompatibility as a virtue of his view. If the two really are incompatible, then only libertarian free will allows us to retain our very commonsense intuitions of moral responsibility.
Same thing? Really, what difference does it make – can it make – given the only possible reality, in the only possible world, what libertarians, determinists, compatibilists, revisionists, incompatibilists, etc., call themselves or how they think about the human condition itself? They’re all in the same boat as the rest of us.
Either everything we think, feel, intuit, say and do is necessarily the embodiment of the only possible reality, or the word “everything” itself becomes rather eerily problematic. Which, of course, given The Gap and Rummy’s Rule, it remains to this day…even after thousands of years in which all of those great minds in both the philosophical and the scientific communities have grappled with it.
Then back to this…
> The hard determinist will bite the bullet and claim that, if the two really are incompatible, we are being intellectually dishonest by maintaining practices of moral responsibility, given that we can always trace the causes of an action to something that is ultimately fully outside of the control of the agent
Am I one of those hard determinists? Yeah, sometimes. But then I’m straight back to the part where in regard to meaning, morality and metaphysics, “I” am still largely fractured and fragmented.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2024, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/575 "2024-12-13T19:29:59Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
> Much has been written about whether or not we have free will. That is not my topic here, but it has a connection to it, in that I want to ask why so much has been written on the matter. Whether we are free or not seems very important to us.
Of course it matters. Of course that’s important. But our brains may well be hard-wired such that we are merely compelled to think and to feel this.
It’s like with Gods and religions. We want to believe they exist because believing that they do “establishes” an anchor for our Self. And this comforts and consoles us in a way that secular dogmas never can. After all, most political ideologies and the like only take you to the grave.
> [@](#):
>
> Let’s first suppose that we are not free – that there is no such thing as free will.
Or, let’s suppose that the author is no less compelled himself to suppose what he does here.
> [@](#):
>
> Let’s further take that to imply that there is no sense in which we may be held responsible for what we do, any more than a tree or a rock may be held responsible when it falls on our head. It either falls, owing to some previous cause, or it does not. It’s a purely factual matter, devoid of any normative judgement as to whether it should or should not have happened.
On the other hand, what, for all practical purposes, does this mean given our day-to-day interactions with others? If you think you understand this as the author intends how might it be applicable to Mary and her abortion? What parts are purely fact and what parts revolve around normative judgments? Or, in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, is every single thing that we think, feel, intuit, say and do merely along for the ride?
> [@](#):
>
> Let’s also suppose that the causes are all that is to be said about the matter. In that case, the entire universe can be summed up by an account of what does exist and what does and does not happen. Events either take place or they don’t. And that’s it. As Ludwig Wittgenstein says, the world is the totality of facts.
On the other hand, Ludwig – “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – Wittgenstein was also keen on exploring the language we use to connect the dots between words and worlds. What can words encompass regarding human interactions? What are they able to describe such that all rational men and women will accept that description. What can we all accept as in fact true because we can connect the words we choose to the world.
Then, shifting gears to the is/ought world…?
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2024, 8:23pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/576 "2024-12-16T20:23:04Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
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> To stave off an objection that might come into someone’s head here, we have to be careful in our language and pay attention to the way in which we use normative words such as ‘should’ or ‘ought’.
On the other hand, some will argue, normative words are essentially interchangeable with words rooted in the laws of nature…words that describe actual objective facts and relationships.
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> We sometimes use these words in a non-normative sense; but the meaning in those cases is quite different. It may signal an ignorance of causes, for example.
Not sure what this means. There are things we should or ought to do – must do – in our interactions with others because unless we do them as they should or ought to be done, we won’t accomplish any particular goals or objectives.
For example, if your goal is to get rich playing the stock market, what should you do in order to make that goal a reality? On the other hand, there are those who will insist that no one ought to play the stock market because we ought to have a socialist economy instead.
Though, of course, some hard determinists will then argue that whatever we think we ought to do or not do here is in sync solely with brains that are in turn solely in sync with the laws of matter.
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> So suppose the jewellers have just returned your watch, after cleaning and servicing it. After a few days it stops: we might say that the watch should not or ought not to have broken down. What we mean here is that, given the servicing your watch has just been through, there should/ought to be no cause for it to stop working – while at the same time presumably not denying that there is a cause for the malfunction, we just don’t know what it is.
Here though [to me] this assumes we ought to assume in turn that we have some measure of free will. Something caused the watch to stop working. Who is responsible for that? And how can we hold them responsible as, say, a Libertarian might?
Though, sure – click – I may well be misunderstanding the author’s point.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 20, 2024, 9:35pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/577 "2024-12-20T21:35:21Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
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> But no moral blame attaches to your watch: it cannot be said to have made a mistake, or done something wrong in the sense of selecting poorly from various options. A watch simply does what a watch does (or in this case, does not do). Of the watchsmith, by contrast, we might say that he has done something incorrectly.
Seemingly the same for all other aspects of creation. The universe is bursting at the seams with “things” and “things” interacting with other “things” that no one holds responsible…even though the consequences of their interactions can be devastating.
Devastation however is something only human beings seem capable of appreciating. In other words, such that others are held responsible for causing it. But what if Nature is to the watchmaker what the watchmaker is to the watch.
There’s [still] no getting around the profound mystery embedded in matter somehow becoming biological – living matter. Then the human brain itself. Make of it what you will. But do you actually imagine your understanding of it here and now comes closest to explaining it…ontologically.
And then for extra credit…teleologically?
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> Having got that out of the way, in what follows the term ‘normative’ will be used to imply that it makes sense to say that doing something a certain way is correct or incorrect, and that the rule giving the correct way of doing it is not descriptive but rather prescriptive: it sets down how something should be done, regardless of what is actually done.
Fine. Now all we need is an actual context…one, however, in which things that make sense to you make no sense to me or to others. And how some make sense of them may or may not make sense to others.
And then the part where we just assume the existence of some measure of free will permitting all of this to unfold in the first place.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2024, 12:17am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/578 "2024-12-23T00:17:14Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
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> Trees, rocks, watches, can neither ‘do things correctly’ nor ‘make mistakes’; they just do what they do.
On the other hand, trees and rocks are a part of the “mindless” natural world…a world we had no part in bringing into existence. Unless of course the watch is intertwined in a watch maker such that he or she could never have not either fixed the watch or not. In other words, watch makers [and those who repair them] are no less an inherent part of nature as well. Then it’s either click or no click.
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> If what they do does not fit a putative law of nature saying what they ‘should’ do in a descriptive sense, then either we’ve misunderstood what happened or else we need to change our perception of the laws of nature, for it is one of these options which is mistaken or incorrect, not what happens.
Again, given The Gap and Rummy’s Rule, who here can tell us what, relating to a particular set of circumstances, is either correctly understood or not? Then the part where some argue that nothing is either correct or incorrect. Essentially, in other words.
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> However, when we say of someone that putting ‘7’ after ‘2+3=’ is incorrect, we are suggesting, normatively, that they should have written 5 but chose to write 7, and that in so doing they did not correctly follow the rules of arithmetic.
Normatively: in a way that relates to rules, or making people obey rules, especially rules of behavior. cambridge dictionary.
Like there isn’t a world of difference between rules embedded objectively in the either/ or world and rules pertaining to conflicting goods.
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> Generally, when a maths teacher sets a student a sum to solve, they are not just waiting to see what happens next, where one result is as good as any other, and no error can be made in what happens. Rather, in the normative case, they want to see if the student can give an answer that’s correct, or not.
Fortunately, in the world of mathematics, normative rules are in fact applicable to everyone. Thus, the either/or world – nature – unfolding from the Big Bang. “That is correct” or “that is incorrect” can actually be demonstrated here. Unless, in a wholly determined universe, they are entirely interchangeable given the only possible reality.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2024, 1:21am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/579 "2024-12-31T01:21:28Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
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> Secondly, though, only if there is freedom to choose may anything be properly considered right or wrong, some things better or worse, some things to have a meaning because they’re more important or significant than others. So freedom of the will appears to be another necessary condition for there to be values, since only creatures with free will can choose between options of what should or should not happen. So only if there is freedom can there be both ethics and aesthetics.
In other words, because free will is so vital to us in establishing moral responsibility and beauty, that means it must be true? As though in believing this is an inherent component of the human condition that’s demonstration enough that it is?
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> Well, without freedom we would perhaps be left with the facts of our preferences and tastes, but with no normative implication – you cannot be right or wrong in respect to them; they would simply be situations that either are or are not.
And that’s where many will take this. The fact that as individuals we choose the behaviors that sustain our own personal preferences and tastes…how could that possibly be mistaken for, say, something like the Terminator? He’s all machine when push comes to shove. Meaning, among other things, he is entirely amoral. Most of us, on the other hand, while functioning autonomically in so many crucial ways, are convinced all that just stops when we come to the brain. They “just know” this.
Unless, of course, those who believe this are then asked to provide us with actual definitive evidence that this is the case.
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> You either like cheese, or potatoes, or chicken, or you do not – there’s no point in arguing with someone that they’re not right if they don’t like what you do, or asserting that they’ve made a mistake, that they ought to like it.
Unless, perhaps, in whatever manner you do argue, you are merely arguing only that which your brain compels you to.
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> However, with values and meaning, there is such a point, for a (good) judgement of value or meaning follows a rational process, implying the possibility of normative judgement as to a correct or a mistaken view.
Of course, here I argue that even given some degree of free will, judgment calls of this nature are rooted existentially in dasein. So, if autonomy is proven beyond all doubt, there does not appear to be a way for mere mortals in a No God world to establish which judgment calls are in fact the most rational.
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### Author:  [@iambiguous](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/iambiguous)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2025, 8:22pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/thoughts-on-determinism/49220/580 "2025-01-07T20:22:45Z")
Why is Freedom So Important To Us?
John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.
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> The denial of free will, and hence of moral responsibility, also potentially justifies the awful prospect of criminals not being held to account and punished for the wrongs they choose, but rather, being treated merely as broken mechanisms that need to be fixed (see for instance A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962).
Again, however, in a determined universe as some encompass it “in their heads” philosophically, what they believe as mere mortals in a No God world is only that which they were never able not to believe. Some will be compelled to deny free will while others will be compelled to embrace it. Similarly, some will be appalled at the “awful prospect” of eliminating human autonomy “and thus moral responsibility” given criminal activity, while others are clinging to the hope that it really is “all completely beyond my control”.
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> Indeed, the absence of freedom from our lives, or perhaps I should say, the firm belief that we are not free, that we have no genuine ability to guide our lives through freely-considered choices – would take us to an utterly different way of living, including being stripped of all values and meaning.
The good news here [for some] revovles around the fact they actually would not have it any other way…even if they could have it another way. Why? Because even though their own life is filled with failure after failure, they “failed” only because they were never determined – fated? destined? – to succeed.
In other words, the part where something is deemed to be “beyond our control”. And to boot by Nature and its laws themselves.
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> We would no more have either of those than a rock does when rolling downhill until it hits something and stops. That would indeed be full non-significance, from our birth to our death: we would just be complicated rocks rolling down a hill until we stop. Such a terrible, barren prospect is the reason freedom is so important to us.
Here, one suspects, there are any number of us who might conclude instead that, because the prospect of being wholly determined by the laws of matter is so repugnant to them, that’s what makes it unreasonable.
Like – click – I’m being irrational myself here when I argue that human value judgments are rooted existentially in dasein. And thus that “failures to communicate” are inevitable in a fractured and fragmented assessment of good and bad, right and wrong.
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