thoughts on determinism

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An Examination of Free Will and Buddhism
Barbara O’Brien

Karma and Determinism

The Buddha also rejected a purely deterministic view in his teaching on karma. Most of the Buddha’s contemporaries taught that karma operates in a simple straight line. Your life now is the result of what you did in the past; what you do now will determine your life in the future. The problem with this view is that it leads to a degree of fatalism – there’s nothing you can do about your life now.

Exactly. Either what goes around must come around or it might come around in different ways instead…depending on the extent to which you are in fact free to change its trajectory. So, where does the Buddhist understanding of karma end and fatalism begin? And if there is no God around to determine that, what does? Also, how is karma construed in regard to such things as the caste system. Some are “untouchables” but they only have themselves to blame? They must have done something in the past to warrant their…fate?

But the Buddha taught that the effects of past karma can be mitigated by present action; in other words, one is not fated to suffer X because one did X in the past. Your actions now can change the course of karma and impact your life now.

Again, though, technically, how exactly does that work? Who or what is “out there” juggling all of these variables such that the past and the present and the future are either seamlessly intertwined or open to, what, mitigating or aggravating circumstances?

With many religious denominations it’s a God, the God. But that gets tricky because this God is often said to be omniscient. And how then is an all-knowing God able to be reconciled with human autonomy?

But with Buddhism? What “force” or “entity” is “behind” karma? The universe itself? Or does this part require Buddhism’s own rendition of a “leap of faith”?

The Theravadin monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote…

“Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in multiple feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also the present. Furthermore, present actions need not be determined by past actions. In other words, there is free will, although its range is somewhat dictated by the past.”

Now, this is definitely what I call a “general description spiritual contraption”.

Any Buddhists here care to explore the actual existential implications of it given your own life…past, present and future?

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Compatibilism
David Agler

Quick Review

Determinism is the general idea that either physical or causal
determinism is true.

Surface freedom: S has surface freedom if and only if S can act on their
desires without interference.

Deep freedom: S has deep freedom if and only if (1) S could have acted
otherwise and (2) the source of S’s action is found in themselves (they
are in control of their desires to the extent to which they can be held
morally responsible for their action

1] We will need a context

2] in exploring this context, our only option is to assume some measure of free will. Why? Because, in my view, discussions such as this would be subsumed in this:

[b]All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?

Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.

Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.

Either in the only possible reality in the only possible world or of their own volition.[/b]

Compatibilism and Incompatibilism

Compatibilism - freedom and determinism are consistent, viz., both
of the positions can be true.

Incompatibilism - freedom and determinism are inconsistent,
viz., both of the positions cannot be true.

Someday [hopefully] in a world where compatibilism reigns, someone will actually be able to explain to me how on earth compatibilism can possibly make any sense at all given determinism.

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Compatibilism
David Agler

Classical compatibilism – The world can be determined and individuals can be free since:

1. The world can be determined and
2. A subject S can be free since there are cases where it is true that
   were S to desire to do X, they would both have the power or ability
   to do X and nothing would prevent them from doing X

Of course: Scratch subject X.

Let X = Merrick Garland indicting Donald Trump. Garland desires to indict Trump because Garland deems it rational to indict Trump. But how exactly can Garland be free to indict Trump “since there are cases where it is true that were Garland to desire to indict Trump, they would both have the power or ability to indict Trump and nothing would prevent them from indicting Trump”.

Huh? Nothing could prevent him from indicting Trump. Why? Because given that his brain is wholly in sync with the laws of matter, he was never able not to indict him.

Note to compatibilists:

Again, what am I missing here?

We will consider three objections to classical compatibilism:

1. Determinism entails the lack of capacity to act otherwise (a
   necessary ingredient for freedom) and so compatibilism is false
2. Determinism entails the lack of deep freedom (ability to control our
   desires to the extent to which we can be said to be morally
   responsible), and so compatibilism is false.

Yep, that works for me. Why? Because it was such that, here and now, it was never able not to work for me. On the other hand, what do the laws of matter have in store for me down the road? Will one day a new configuration of matter compel me to embrace compatibilism?

Then this:

3. Compatibilism entails determinism; determinism is a hopeless doctrine; therefore, we ought to accept compatibilism as a last resort.

Again: Huh?

Given the Garland/Trump context above, you tell me. Compelled or not.

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Compatibilism
David Agler

Critics of compatibilism will immediately reject the theory because:
• Freedom implies the capacity to act otherwise
• Determinism seems to exclude the capacity to act otherwise
• Therefore, compatibilism cannot be true.
Let’s call this the Argument from the ability to do otherwise

There you go. If you are determined by the laws of matter to read these words then you lacked the capacity to opt not to read them. And if that is the case and another lacked the capacity to not insist that not reading them is immoral how could you be held morally responsible for not reading them other than because whoever holds you morally responsible was never able not to.

Yet thinking this through given the possibility that we have free will also seems to revolve around the assumption that we may not have it…and we suggest the possibility that we do only because we were never able not to.

Yet there does not appear to be either a scientific or a philosophical – or a theological? – resolution to any of this. Or, rather, none that I am aware of.

Objection: no ability to do otherwise
Argument from the ability to do otherwise
• P1: If determinism is true, then every single one of my actions is
determined in advance.
• P2: If every one of my actions is determined in advance, then I could
never have acted differently than I did (can’t act otherwise).
• P3: The ability to act otherwise is an essential component of what it
means to be free.
• IC: Therefore, if determinism is true, then no one is free.
• P4: Classical compatibilism says that if determinism is true, then we can
still be free.
• C: Therefore, classical compatibilism is false

Same thing. Basically, we are stuck here trying to connect the dots between words that we may or may not be compelled to choose and a world going back to an understanding of existence itself that we may or may not ever fully understand.

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Compatibilism
David Agler

Cereal Case
• Suppose I ate eggs for breakfast.
• I ate eggs because (1) I desired to eat eggs rather than something else and (2) I had power to act on this desire.
• Suppose also that I was determined to eat eggs. Past events along with factors outside of my control shaped the desire: I will want eggs for breakfast

If I am free, then I could have eaten something else. I could have acted otherwise. I could have eaten cereal instead?

But the quandary here always goes deeper. We can pose thought experiments like this…but we have no way of knowing if in posing them that too isn’t but another manifestation of the only possible reality. We are always stuck using our brain in order to determine what using our brain actually encompasses. That’s why Gods are invented. With Him we can anchor human existence itself in something that transcends human existence. Something that explains human existence. Something that gives human existence meaning and purpose.

Compatibilists: Yes, even though you were determined to eat eggs, if you had desired to eat the cereal and nothing was preventing you given that desire, then you could have eaten the cereal.

Again: as though what we desire is not in turn wholly determined.

That’s where some here seem to go though. They focus in on human emotions or human intuition as though they were somehow qualitatively different from human thoughts. But, along with thoughts, where do emotions and “gut feelings” originate if not the brain?

It just seems reasonable to assume that if the human brain is matter and matter interacts with other matter in accordance with its “immutable laws” then nothing that is matter gets excluded. Not until God does reveal Himself and explains existence or science is able to establish beyond all doubt that human brain matter is the one exception to the rule here on planet Earth.

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Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols,Joshua Knobe

The dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists must be one of the most persistent and heated deadlocks in Western philosophy. Incompatibilists maintain that people are not fully morally responsible if determinism is true, i.e., if every event is an inevitable consequence of the prior conditions and the natural laws. By contrast, compatibilists maintain that even if determinism is true our moral responsibility is not undermined in the slightest, for determinism and moral responsibility are perfectly consistent.

Fully responsible? How can they be responsible to any degree at all “if every event is an inevitable consequence of the prior conditions and the natural laws”?

That’s the part I can’t come to grips with from the compatibilists…

“Mary, my brain, wholly in sync with the laws of matter, compels me to tell you that you were never able to freely opt not to abort Jane. But my brain also compels me to tell you that you are morally responsible for having done so.”

In other words, whatever “for all practical purposes” that means.

The debate between these two positions has invoked many different resources, including quantum mechanics, social psychology, and basic metaphysics.

And whatever the hell we do here.

But recent discussions have relied heavily on arguments that draw on people’s intuitions about particular cases. Some philosophers have claimed that people have incompatibilist intuitions others have challenged this claim and suggested that people’s intuitions actually fit with compatibilism.

Either way, our intuitive, visceral, “gut feelings” are among the most mysterious reactions we have. Neither wholly rational nor wholly emotional nor even wholly conscious, it just seems to bubble up from “somewhere” inside us.

Thus…

But although philosophers have constructed increasingly sophisticated arguments about the implications of people’s intuitions, there has been remarkably little discussion about why people have the intuitions they do. That is to say, relatively little has been said about the specific psychological processes that generate or sustain people’s intuitions.

Which takes us to the part where the sheer complexities of human psychology itself – partly ego, partly superego, partly id/ partly conscious, partly subconscious, partly unconscious/partly genes, partly memes – may be the place to go in figuring out exactly what that “somehow” is in explaining human autonomy.

Also, the mind-boggling mystery of human dreams. The part that seems perplexing [to me] beyond ever grasping.

Thus…

And yet, it seems clear that questions about the sources of people’s intuitions could have a major impact on debates about the compatibility of responsibility and determinism. There is an obvious sense in which it is important to figure out whether people’s intuitions are being produced by a process that is generally reliable or whether they are being distorted by a process that generally leads people astray.

Then this part:

1] it hasn’t been pinned down yet
2] it’s not likely to be pinned before any of us here shuffle off our mortal coils

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Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe

Consider, for example, Watson’s interesting discussion of the crimes of Robert Harris. Watson provides long quotations from a newspaper article about how Harris savagely murdered innocent people, showing no remorse for what he had done. Then he describes, in equally chilling detail, the horrible abuse Harris had to endure as he was growing up.

What is this if not a classic example of how the life one once lived can have a profound impact on the life one lives now. Even if a consensus is reached that the behaviors that Harris inflicted on others are no less immoral than the behaviors inflicted on him, we are still faced with the problematic reality of holding him morally responsible given that the behaviors he inflicted on others would almost certainly not have been chosen had others not inflicted terrible behaviors on him.

And that’s before the part where from the perspective of those who harmed Harris and from the perspective of Harris himself inflicting harm on others, they deserved what they got. And there are, of course, so many possible existential permutations given sets of circumstances that can be significantly different.

After reading all of these vivid details, it would be almost impossible for a reader to respond by calmly working out the implications of his or her theory of moral responsibility. Any normal reader will have a rich array of reactions, including not only abstract theorizing but also feelings of horror and disgust. A reader’s intuitions about such a case might be swayed by her emotions, leaving her with a conclusion that contravened her more abstract, theoretical beliefs about the nature of moral responsibility.

Yes, that’s how it often unfolds. In a labyrinth of convoluted variables, we only have so much understanding and control over. But only if we live in a free will world can it come down to calculating moral responsibility as most of us imagine it: in being able to think a situation through and, to the best of our ability, come to a reasonable conclusion regarding right and wrong behavior. After all, in a determined universe, a moral theory is interchangeable with a moral practice. Words and worlds all intertwined in the only possible outcome. Same with intuitions and emotions. And even if they did contravene our intellectual assessments…so what? It’s all the same to nature.

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Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe

Intuitions About Free Will and Responsibility

Here of course things get downright…ineffable?

And that’s because intuition in and of itself seems to intertwine so many complex facets of the self…

1] the intellectual, the emotional, the psychological
2] the conscious, the subconscious, the unconscious
3] the genetic, the memetic, the two in combination

Thus, in regard to “intuitions about free will and responsibility”, what does this…

“Intuition: the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning”

…even mean?

You say, “I have a gut feeling about free will and responsibility…they’re the real deal”.

Someone else says, “I have a gut feeling about free will and responsibility…they’re not the real deal”.

Then what?

Incompatibilist philosophers have traditionally claimed both that ordinary people believe that human decisions are not governed by deterministic laws and that ordinary people believe that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. These claims have been based, not on systematic empirical research, but rather on anecdote and informal observation.

My own point, more or less. Making claims about free will and moral responsibility in a world of words is one thing, backing those words up as scientists go about backing up their own assessments experimentally and through empirical research, another thing altogether.

I’m no less embedded in the philosophical assessments myself. But at least I recognize the limitations of that. In the end, philosophers can only take their own conclusions to those who can plug them into the efforts being made to study actual brains making actual decisions.

Yet years go by and there is still no definitive assessments from the hard guys and gals either. Or, rather, none that I am familiar with. Google free will and neuroscience and you get this:
google.com/search?q=free+wi … nt=gws-wiz

So, peruse the links and get back to us on whether you perused the links of your own free will or not.

Next up:

For example, Kane writes, “In my experience, most ordinary persons start out as natural incompatibilists”. In recent years, philosophers have sought to put claims like this one to the test using experimental methods. The results have sometimes been surprising.

Surprising because we freely opted to be surprised? Or surprising because we were never able to not be surprised?

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Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe

…consider the claim that ordinary people believe that human decisions are not governed by deterministic laws. In a set of experiments exploring the lay understanding of choice, both children and adults tended to treat moral choices as indeterminist. Participants were presented with cases of moral choice events (e.g., a girl steals a candy bar) and physical events (e.g., a pot of water comes to a boil), and they were asked whether, if everything in the world was the same right up until the event occurred, the event had to occur.

Any ordinary people here? How about normal people? How about ordinary and/or normal people here who have spent years as top-notch neuroscientists employing the scientific method in order to study how the brain functions in the act of actually making a choice. Using fMRI technology in examining the brains of subjects who have either stolen candy bars or have not. The brains of, say, devout moralists or sociopaths.

Any links we can turn to here?

Both children and adults were more likely to say that the physical event had to occur than that the moral choice event had to occur. This result seems to vindicate the traditional claim that ordinary people in our culture believe that at least some human decisions are not determined.

Gasp?!

Physical events unfold in the either/or world. Over and over and over and over again when you do something in the either/or world you get the results you’d expect. Or, when you do something and get different results, if you dig deep enough you can determine why the result was different. The difference is not predicated on conflicting personal opinions regarding what the result ought to have been because different people want a different result.

That’s why moral conflicts are so exasperating. Each side digs down and, given their own set of assumptions, demands that others embrace the results that they want. In other words, for the moral objectivists among us, there is no distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world.

Then it’s just a question of [existentially] embracing one or another God or No God font.

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Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is not incompatible with free will, i.e. even if determinism is true, we still have free will. A first form of compatibilism argues that to have free will is simply for one’s choice to cause one’s action. To do what you want to do is the essence of free will.

Clearly, the only way that this can make sense is to construe determinism in such a way that “somehow” it does not encompass everything that our brains in sync with the laws of matter compels us to think, feel, say and do.

Obviously, unlike a rock that tumbles down a mountainside wholly in sync with the material laws of gravity, if we choose to pick up a rock and bash someone alongside the head with it, this reflects the laws of matter – of choosing – in a whole other way. Mindful matter is different – enigmatically, ineffably different? – from mindless matter.

But how? Take God out of the picture and the bottom line is that here and now neither philosophers nor scientists can tell us.

To do what you want. How is that different from wanting what you want?

Some then go “further” and argue that even if we do construe determinism in this manner it is only because we were never able not to.

Then we’re stuck because intelligently argued conflicting conclusions are still the bottom line.

Here, of course, we are stuck with words. We create arguments about choosing and about willing such that the arguments themselves are often bursting at the seams with conflicting definitions and deductions.

So, for example, Hume says that free will is simply a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

Like we can pin up unequivocally if we are freely able to will what we will.

In other words, I act as I do because of what I chose to do. If I had chosen to act differently, then I would have acted differently. This does not conflict with determinism. My action is caused by my choice. And my choice may in turn be caused by other events. So there is a causal story for my choice and action. And determinism agrees that if my choice had been different, then I would have acted differently (different cause, different effect)

Yes, other events lead up to what I choose but there is still a component buried “somewhere” in my brain that “somehow” makes the final decision mine and mine alone.

Thus Mary’s abortion is the result of her choice. And her choice is embedded in a series of events that led up to it. And if those events had been different, she might have made a different choice. But how exactly does noting this demonstrate that in a determined universe where Mary chose an abortion there is “somewhere” in her brain an “I” that “somehow” might have prompted her not to choose the abortion.

Sure, there may well be. God or otherwise.

But where is the hard evidence that confirms it?

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Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin

Objection

But we can object that this is too weak a notion of free will. It is not enough to say that I would have acted differently if I had chosen differently. We also need to say that I could have chosen differently. Someone may choose to act as they do, but be motivated by a compulsion or addiction. For example, if I am addicted to smoking, there may be times when I feel I have to have a cigarette – I can’t chose not to. Yet it would still be true, that if I did chose not to, then I wouldn’t. But I’m not free to chose not to have a cigarette.

All of this does get tricky because it depends on how far back you take determinism. What if your compulsion and your addiction themselves were no more than an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

Indeed, some argue that even in regard to how far back you do take it, this too is just another necessary component of a wholly determined universe.

It can get maddening. Why? Because we just don’t know how the human condition fits into the nature of existence itself. The ineffable reality of the brain grappling to explain itself. So, what some do here is [compelled or not] to conjure up God. At least then there is an entity that we can turn to explain, well, everything, right? Unless perhaps this too is completely beyond our control.

Another example: suppose that someone has inserted a chip into my brain and is able to cause me to choose to act in a particular way. It is true that if I had chosen differently, I would have acted differently. But I couldn’t have chosen differently, because someone is controlling what I choose. In both examples, what I choose determines what I do, yet I could not choose anything else, so in what sense are my choices free?

Back to Schopenhauer, right? What many compatibilists seem to focus in on is the fact that we do choose things. We’re not like rocks and mountains and rivers and forests and other facets of nature that are completely mindless. Tropical storm Nicole will hit the East coast of Florida as a category 1 hurricane. But it’s not like it chooses to do this. But human beings do choose to live on the coasts…in the path of these [at times] extremely dangerous storms. Ian for example.

So, what’s the difference?

And what if, as mind-boggling as it seems, there isn’t one?

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Compatibilism
Michael Lacewin

A second form of compatibilism argues that it is a confusion to oppose free will and causation. The opposite of caused is uncaused; the opposite of free is constrained. Events are caused or uncaused, actions are free or constrained. So the opposite of a free action is not a caused event but a constrained action. Actions that are not constrained are free. The issue of causation is irrelevant.

Again, Mary and Jane.

What caused Mary to abort Jane? She got pregnant as a result of a defective contraceptive device. Then going back to why she chose to have sex and why sex is a part of the human condition and why the human species came about as a result of the evolution of biological life on Earth going back to the Big Bang going back to…what exactly?

Causes seem to be everywhere here. But we don’t know what caused the existence of existence itself. Or, if it has always existed, how to encompass this either ontologically or teleologically. God, perhaps?

As for the distinction between caused and constrained, in a wholly determined universe where the human brain itself is just along for the “only possible reality” ride, making that distinction in and of itself is just another domino toppling over on cue re…nature?

Including this domino…

Here are four cases of constraint that bring out the contrast with free action:

1. You trip and fall into someone, knocking them over. Your knocking them over is physically constrained, not something that you had any choice or control over.
2. Someone puts a gun to your head, and tells you to push someone over. You have a kind of choice here – you can push them or die. But your action is very constrained, by coercion, a psychological constraint.
3. You are addicted to heroin, and acting on the intense desire for it, you steal from a store to get the money to buy more. You hate your addiction and would chose to be without it if you could. Your action is driven by an addiction, so it is physically (and psychologically) constrained, and not free.
4. Kleptomania is the compulsion to steal, without needing to or profiting from it. If you were a kleptomaniac, you would want to steal things, even things that aren’t much use to you. You may even want to not want to steal and try to resist stealing; but you don’t (always) succeed. We could argue that being a kleptomaniac is a case of psychological compulsion.

These four cases all stand in contrast to what it is to act freely, to act without physical or psychological constraint. This, say compatibilists, is the contrast that matters to whether we are free.

Again, and again, and again: what the compatibilists say about all of this is no less fated/destined to be as an inherent component of the only possible reality in the only possible world.

Though only if the hard determinism argument prevails. But: As though, for each of us, it does or does not in turn in the only possible reality in the only possible world.

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Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

]Two Calvinists strike up a conversation, and I just happen to be nearby. As they express their love for the doctrines of grace, I then hear them describe the difference between, say, Calvin and Arminius: the former rejected free will and the latter heralded free will. Though they don’t know it yet, pitching the long-standing debate this way leaves them open to the all-too-common objection that we are just a bunch of robots. Maybe it is time for the eavesdropper to speak up.

No, really, what is the existential relationship between Calvinism and the fate of your very own eternal soul?

“Are you familiar with Calvinist doctrine? At its heart is the concept of predestination. Calvinists believe that, at the beginning of time, God selected a limited number of souls to grant salvation and there’s nothing any individual person can do during their mortal life to alter their eternal fate.”

Okay, the concept of Calvinism. But what about the nitty-gritty existential reality of your very own soul either nestled blissfully for all of eternity in Salvation or writhing in agony the very embodiment of Damnation?

Is it really possible that the God of Abraham has in fact already selected a handful of us to reside in Heaven with Him forever and ever while the rest – including the most fervent defenders of Christianity here – are already doomed to Hell? Period. Judgment Day for each of us only as it has always ever been fated/destined to be?

What to make of this, right?

Now you know Arminius was not a contemporary of Calvin. But hold on a minute, Calvin did have plenty of nemeses, and one of them would take up Calvin on issues that would, later on, put Arminius in hot water with his Reformed counterparts. The man’s name was Albertus Pighius, a Dutch Roman Catholic scholar.

You may be aware of Martin Luther’s famous work The Bondage of the Will, a must read for every Christian. But many forget that Calvin wrote a book with a similar title: The Bondage and Liberation of the Will (though it is his subtitle that gets down to the nitty-gritty: A Defense of the Orthodox Doctrine of Human Choice Against Pighius).

Now here of course we get into the historical accounts of Christianity. Jesus Christ [man or myth] arrives on Earth, is crucified, dies for our sins.

Then [historically] all those flesh and blood human beings putting together this while rejecting that in constructing one or another rendition of the Christian Bible.

Calvin then becoming just one of those to put his own rooted existentially in dasein stamp on it all.

God, the determinist.

While there is much we could say about the Calvin-Pighius boxing match, I want to ask a question that may seem, well, obvious: Did Calvin believe in free will? By looking at Calvin’s Institutes, as well as his debate with Pighius, we discover that this question is not so easily answered as one might have assumed.

Seriously, how could someone convince himself that whether he lived his life, say, embracing Hitler or doing everything in his power to defeat him, it was all entirely moot. His fate was decided by God right from the start.

Or is Calvinism just one more frame of mind such that it doesn’t matter what your fate is as long as you are able to convince yourself it was all “beyond my control…so don’t blame me.”

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Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

To begin, Calvin points us to the first sin of Adam and, like Paul in Romans 5, connects the dots from Adam to all of humanity. When Adam sinned he “entangled and immersed his offspring in the same miseries.” Calvin defines original sin as “a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls ‘works of the flesh.’” The result of descending from Adam’s “impure seed” and being “born infected with the contagion of sin” is the pervasive corruption of man’s nature, so that the “whole man is overwhelmed—as by a deluge—from head to foot, so that no part is immune from sin and all that proceeds from him is to be imputed to sin.” As Calvin states elsewhere, “So depraved is [man’s] nature that he can be moved or impelled only to evil.”

Of course, to the best of my knowledge, Calvin wasn’t actually there in the Garden of Eden to observe all of this. Like most, he read the account in the Bible. Which he then presumed it to be true because it is the word of God. And then presumed, what, that he must presume this because he did not possess the free will not to?

Again, that’s where it always gets tricky. To reject free will is always to reject your own. So whatever you think, feel, say or do in regard to the Christian God you were never able not to. Only, as with most of us, Calvin was not actually able to demonstrate this such that his own account of Adam was indisputably not one that he had opted for autonomously.

And he can only presume that Adam himself was not compelled by God to bring about Original Sin. Or was he? Does an omniscient God already know that Adam would eat the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil? Was he really ever able to opt freely not to?

How can this not be completely confusing without God Himself setting it all straight?

If man has been corrupted as by a deluge, and if sin permeates every recess so that “no part is immune from sin,” then it follows that man’s will is in bondage to sin. “For the will is so overwhelmed by wickedness and so pervaded by vice and corruption that it cannot in any way escape to honorable exertion or devote itself to righteousness.” Consequently, Calvin, with Augustine, does not hesitate to title the will “unfree.”

And yet there are over 2 billion Christians around the globe who don’t seem to grasp that. Or, perhaps, in not grasping it, they are unwittingly in sync with God’s will?

Let’s face it though, sin takes on a whole new meaning if you were never able not to sin. And if, whether you do or do not, the fate of your eternal soul had already been decided by God…at or around the time of the Big Bang?

Still, it really comes down to how Calvin was actually able to demonstrate this beyond insisting that he was never able to demonstrate it beyond being fated to believe it.

I mean, in all seriously, what could you have told him to get around that?

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Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

Unfree and Coerced?

Doesn’t Calvin’s argument imply that man is coerced? Not at all, Calvin replies. Man sins willingly. Yes, it is out of necessity, but not out of compulsion. Such a distinction is one of Calvin’s chief points in his treatise against Pighius, who argues that necessitas (necessity) implies coactio (coercion).

Again, let’s acknowledge that Calvin’s speculations here are not derived from actual transcripts he provides of conversations he had with the Christian God. No, instead, like all of those who have a very different take on Him, they are derived solely from how he himself interpreted the Bible and the historical accounts of Christianity. None of what he claims goes much beyond that.

Well, unless, of course, someone here can provide us with more definitive evidence regarding Calvin and the Christian God.

Then that truly convoluted distinction between doing something out of necessity willingly but not being compelled to. Now, sure, if all one need do here is to make that distinction “in their head”, I can imagine any number of arguments that revolve entirely around a “world of words”.

But if one is asked to demonstrate how “for all practical purposes” he or she chooses particular behaviors out of necessity willingly but is not compelled to…?

How exactly does that work? Especially given the added conundrum that revolves around reconciling an omniscient Christian God with human autonomy. God know everything you will ever do but you are still doing it of your own volition.

Then, of course, way, way, way up into the intellectual clouds we go:

However, as Paul Helm explains, for Calvin “it does not follow from the denial of free will that what a person chooses is the result of coercion.” Coercion negates responsibility, but necessity is “consistent with being held responsible for the action, and being praised or blamed for it.” Therefore, Calvin can affirm that man “acts wickedly by will, not by compulsion.”

How is this sort of spiritual/philosophical/intellectual assessment not utterly dependent on how one defines the meaning of words used to define the meaning of yet more words still placed in a particular order.

How do you connect the dots between acting wickedly by will but not out of compulsion given that the Christian God is said to be “all-knowing”?

And please try to explain it us in such a way that it involves more than just your own “spiritual/philosophical/intellectual” world of words assessment.

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Our Nietzschean Future
Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

No Free Will: To Power or Otherwise

The nature of the projected crisis is indicated by a conviction expressed throughout Nietzsche’s writing: his absolute unbelief in the freedom of human will.

Here we go again…

Someone claims to reject the freedom of human will. But how far does this go? Did Nietzsche argue that he did not believe in the freedom of human will because he was literally never able to opt to believe in it? Are all of the books he wrote merely but one more inherent, necessary manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world? Or is he like Big Mike here…a freewill determinist. We live in a determined universe but his arguments are still more rational than yours.

In other words…

Though the precise nature of his unbelief in human freedom is subject to debate, what is certain is that Nietzsche did not conceive of human beings as being in any traditional sense free agents, responsible for their actions.

Okay, is that vague enough for you? And how precise can we be in regard to pinning down what in “any traditional sense free agents are”? Free agents from the perspective of the Objectivists, the Libertarians, the Anarchists, the Communists?

Given, say, a particular context?

Our thoughts and consciousness are functions of deeper processes beyond our ken, and the freedom of our will is an illusion.

Okay, but, again, how deep? All the way? And how does the answer that any of us might give here not bump up against this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

The part many here will just “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” out of addressing…merely asserting that their answer is the one everyone who is not a retard or a moron is obligated to accept.

There are different varieties of denial of free will, support for several of which can be found in Nietzsche’s writings, but none of them allows a notion of freedom substantial enough to grant us responsibility for our choices and actions.

Okay then, what are we to make of this in regard to the Uberman and the Last Man?

Neither one of them are really responsible for being what they are? The masters are masters only because they were “fated”, “destined” to be masters? Same with the flocks of sheep?

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Did John Calvin Believe in Free Will?
MATTHEW BARRETT at the TGC website

Willful Captivity

Does [the above] mean that Calvin does affirm “free will”? If by freedom one means, as Pighius argues, that man’s will is in no way determined but that man has the self-power to will good or evil toward God (what is today titled libertarian freedom), so that by his own strength he can equally will either, then free will is rejected by Calvin.

That’s when some here will start insisting that nothing of what we opine about any of this is really philosophically relevant until we first define what we mean by words like free will, determinism and compatibilism.

Or how we define God?

So, I would then interject, given a particular experience that Calvin might have encountered himself, what did he affirm as a manifestation of how he defined free will, determinism and compatibilism? And what if others defined them differently? How would we go about pinning down the optimal definition? And how does that relate to the manner in which different people define God differently?

Connecting the dots between those words and the world we lived in…and the world we interact with others in.

But if by free will one means, as Augustine maintained, that man wills out of voluntary necessity (not coercion) then willful choice can be affirmed.

Again, pinning down the exact definition of necessity and coercion so as to precisely differentiate them…given a particular situation?

In any event, ever and always keep all of this up in the clouds of abstraction:

Nevertheless, even if man wills out of necessity it is only a necessity to sin prior to effectual grace. “For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity wills in an evil way. For where there is bondage, there is necessity.”

Got that? Something to with how each of us understands “in our head” the existential bond between an omniscient God and human autonomy? And the existential bond between human autonomy and Original Sin?

Therefore, the bondage of the will to sin remains and yet such slavery is a voluntary and willful captivity. For example, consider the Devil himself. The Devil can only do evil all of the time and yet he is fully culpable for his actions and commits them voluntarily though out of necessity.

What could be clearer?

Now all we need from Christians here is for them to note specific examples of how all of this plays out in regard to the behaviors that they choose.

As for the Devil only being able to do evil but still being culpable for doing evil?

Come again?

Besides, if God is omnipotent, the Devil doing evil can only be construed as part of His mysterious ways. As with Judas Iscariot betraying Christ. Otherwise, He had the power to stop Judas and the Devil from doing what they did. Allowing them to be able to do good instead.

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Our Nietzschean Future
Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

The first [variety of denial of free will] notes simply that we cannot possibly be responsible for who we are, because we have no say in our makeup. We aren’t responsible for our genes, biology, biochemistry, brain function, or the formative environment in which we are born and grow.

Okay, but, come on, given the actual existence of free will [and, let’s face it, discussing this is always problematic…even surreal], we know that, given the either/or world as it is objectively and the fact that much of it is beyond our control, there are still any number of things that are in fact within our capacity to leave the same or to change. And to the extent that we can effectuate some measure of rule, reign and restraint over our behaviors, is the extent to which it seems reasonable to hold ourselves responsible. I only note that this “rule, reign and restraint” are often [existentially] manifestations of dasein. That, in other words, had our lives been different, we might be ruling, reigning over or restraining entirely different behaviors.

As these factors are so profound, go so deeply into making us the kind of person we are, with the desires and thought-processes that we have, we cannot realistically be said to be responsible for our choices and actions.

The same thing. What particular behaviors chosen in what particular set of circumstances? The factors can be profound but they can also be realistically accounted for as more rather than less thought out. Again, given some measure of free will.

Galen Strawson believes this to be Nietzsche’s position, and he subscribes to the same stance. He sums up the point by saying that we cannot create ourselves. Illustrating this, the world’s most famous long-term developmental study, the Dunedin Study, has shown how, controlling for variables such as social class, poor impulse control in childhood is the most reliable predictor of poor outcomes in health, wealth and crime in adulthood. The study notes that current research emphasises how genetic factors and brain function play quite significant roles in impulse control – and both are naturally outside of the control of a subject who did not create himself.

Great. Another “study”. And what study has ever been propounded that did not start with one set of assumptions about the human condition rather than another in regard to such things as health, wealth and crime. The Leopold and Loeb Syndrome. Lots of Nietzsche there, right?

“…two brilliant teenagers intent on demonstrating their Nietzschean superiority over the masses.”

Only, again, how far to take it? In a wholly determined universe as some understand it, all they were doing was only what they could never have not done in the first place. They may have been brilliant but they had absolutely no capacity to not be anything other than what the laws of matter compelled them to be.

Then back to this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Given “the gap” and “Rummy’s Rule” of course.

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What is the difference between determinism and fatalism?
From the MyTutor website

This is something that has always baffled me. How can determinism and fatalism – destiny – not be interchangeable if one starts with the assumption that the human brain itself is but more matter wholly in sync with the laws of matter?

First of all, the thing to realise is that both of these theories have the same result in the end. They both mean that how our life ends up is decided by forces other than ourselves. But the difference between the two is in how the direction of our lives is decided.

Okay, for all practical purposes, the same result. Our life unfolding in accordance with factors/variables beyond our control…but still able to go in different directions? Now, the different directions might make sense because sure, look around you…nature is always going in different directions. Look at the path of a hurricane. But how is that the same or different from the paths that humans take if in the end the same laws that govern the matter in hurricanes govern the matter in human brains?

Explained thusly:

In fatalism, we have one true “fate” and we will end up there no matter what. Our life may take whatever journey it want, but we cannot escape our eventual fate.

Hard determinism in other words. On the other hand, why speak of “one true ‘fate’” instead of one true fate?

Then the hairs are split: the “versions”:

What exactly decides this fate is different depending on the version of fatalism we are discussing. For example, some people might believe that we have a fate that is decided by a God, but this is just one version of fatalism.

Cue how some then reconcile an omniscient God with human autonomy?

Determinism, on the other hand, means not only that we have one pre-decided fate that we will end up with, but also that every event in our life is decided by earlier events and actions. In short, fatalism is the theory that there is some destiny that we cannot avoid, although we are able to take different paths up to this destiny. Determinism, however, is the theory that the entire path of our life is decided by earlier events and actions.

That sound you hear is me pulling out my hair.

Please…

Someone explain to me how one’s life can be destined/fated but go in different direction. In such a way that matter in the human brain like matter in the hurricane is not wholly behind any new direction?

Given this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

Only not in theory. How, given the behaviors that you “choose”/“choose” in a no free will world, is your life is destined/fated… but not determined?

No intellectual contraptions, in other words. Real behaviors examined please.

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Our Nietzschean Future
Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

The second related but subtly different conception of our lack of freedom rests on the Nietzschean assertion that the body is the self. In other words, physiological processes (dimly understood though they are) contain or define the whole of the human person.

Spot the key point here? Of course: “dimly understood though they are”. And that’s always my point, isn’t it? We grapple to understand our own measure of autonomy given the staggering gap between what we profess to know about anything at all and how that fits into what we know very, very, very, very little about regarding the existence of existence itself.

Thus: the whole of the human person?!!

On this view, consciousness is merely a function of biological processes beyond our control. This contention could also find support in some recent research. For instance, experimental evidence lends support to the idea that the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii may inhibit risk-aversion in its host. In other words, playing host to this parasite makes people significantly more disposed to taking risks.

And, yes, how utterly fascinating yet entirely perplexing this sort of thing can be. It’s akin to all the other maladies our brains can be afflicted with: dementia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, autism. All the bizarre conditions explored by those like Oliver Sacks.

In other words, all that we still do not understand about the brain chemically and neurologically. For me, in particular, the part that revolves around dreams. The way the brain itself creates “realities” “in our head” that we experience as though in the waking world but utterly beyond our control.

Much more banal is the increasing evidence that gut bacteria play a role in the regulation of mood, and determine our cravings for food. This research into our physiology seems to erode the possibility of free will. The bacteria or parasites to which we play host determine our moods and behaviour, and so our beliefs and lives, even while we cherish the idea that we ourselves determine our fates. Recent research has even suggested that the great marker of our humanity, consciousness, might be the result of the long-ago binding of the genetic code of the Arc virus into the human genome.

Over and again: what to make of this? The moods that we flit from and the behaviors that we choose [over time] regulated and/or determined by “gut bacteria”?!

By the Arc virus? scientificamerican.com/arti … the-brain/

All of these [still mysterious] chemical and neurological interactions unfolding in our brain…and yet here most of us just shrugging that aside and insisting “I make all of my own decision!”