thoughts on determinism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
682

The Science of Free Will by Samir Varma

Then the part where those who agree with this note how, experientially, it is applicable from day to day to day given their own conflicting interactions with others. Then the part where, for many, the complexities become embodied and/or subsumed in one or another rendition of the One [And The Only] True Path to Enlightenment.

Thus you can come to embrace one or another of these particular OTPs…

…and then convince yourself that all the other ones are bogus.

So, in regard to morality and the “meaning of life”, even given free will, fierce conflicts have been around now for thousands of years.

Of course, some particularly hard as nails determinists will insist that, however all of this is viewed, it is viewed by each of us individually given the only possible reality. That this reality may well include the psychological illusion of free will is something that here and now many will reject. Only this rejection itself is seen by the hardcore determinists as just another inherent component of the only possible reality. Nothing, in other words, is not wholly determined for some.

As for the part where puppets become agents, where is the consensus among philosophers and scientists that establishes how this all unfolds systemically in the human brain.

683

I take “random” events to be an exception to causality. I don’t believe anything happens randomly from this perspective on “random.” I think everything that happens, including man’s free will, is determined by the law of identity.

684

How is determinism, or that to which it refers, determination, itself determined?

685

There could only ever be speculation about that.

686

The Science of Free Will by Samir Varma

Go ahead, give it your best shot. Yet despite all of the disciplines out there [scientific or otherwise] it still remains a riddle to this day. Unless, of course, some will insist that, in fact, the way they understand the human brain here and now need be as far as it goes. Thus if you don’t share their own dogmatic philosophical assessment, you are likely to be mocked and ridiculed.

Well, click, of course.

Then the part where we pin down how this might be established given that there are approximately 7 billion billion billion atoms in the body of someone who weighs approximately 150 pounds.

The average human brain alone contains 8 to 9 million billion billion atoms.

As for how many subatomic particles there are…?

Beam me up, Scotty? Right.

On the other hand, how many cross-cultural concepts of destiny are you familiar with? And of them all, can you note the one that is likely to come closest to the objective truth?

687

Like, how is causality caused?
Causation can not be a mechanism, it would be subservient to itself in infinite regress.
It can thus only refer to correspondence of events. That doesn’t mean it isn’t real, or objective, or consistent.
But it does give cause for thoughts about the supposed linearity and directionality of determination.

688

Morality can’t be derived from facts, but it will generate them. Within determinism, morality is best understood as a cause. And the nature of effects it generates is the best indication as to its own causes; why it was created. So roughly, it’s effects are its cause.

It’s establishing has been called a primordial crime against previous code. Establishing morality out of a desire to do so is perhaps the freest act a will might ever commit. Of course will is determined by nature and context, i.e. being - a thing is never free from itself. But if there is such a thing as freedom, if the term has meaning, it is in manifesting a value system. That is the greatest feat of power, which is more or less equal to freedom. Power is freedom to act in accordance with will. This is the only freedom of the will: to enact itself. Much will is restrained, unfree. That’s the way the concept of free will was first understood. A man in a prison has no free will. The modern idea of an undetermined will is just a red cloth.

689

The Science of Free Will by Samir Varma

Some questions investigated include:

Are we living inside an advanced simulation? What are the philosophical and scientific implications for free will if reality is simulated?

As I note above…

Really, there are countless inventions and engineering feats so astounding they provoke in some a suspicion that maybe, just maybe this actually is only a computer simulation, or a manufactured Matrix “reality” or a dream world. The Neo Syndrome? Only with no Morpheus and Trinity [let alone an “Oracle”] around to bring you back around to…to the real reality?

In part, chaos theory has never really sunk in for me. And that’s because we do not have the capacity to determine in any ultimate or objective or essential manner just what does explain every and all material interaction. At least not “here and now” “to the best of my current knowledge”.

For example, what if a God, the God is the initial condition?

Then those who insist they have achieved it already. It’s now just a matter of convincing the rest of us why our own failure to grasp it revolves more around ignorance or stupidity. The ignorant can still be brought around, but the stupid…?

690

They freely CHOOSE the definition that will validate their objectives. Then they freely choose to dismiss and ignore all alternatives, no matter how superior they may be.

They experience will daily.

They experience choice daily.

All of it is dismissed as illusory….all to remain true to their objective, which is to deny themselves all responsibility - maintaining their victim status, as eternally innocent.

They haven’t overcome the god of the Jews, who only offered them ‘free-will to punish its use.

Victims are seduced by this totalitarianism.

No, they still need the scapegoat, to absolve them of all their sins - their shame and guilt, their many errors in judgement, their regrets, so as to preserve their innocence, their self-esteem, rooted in self-deception.

They will refuse to ground their definitions in the experienced world of actions - independently verifiable actions. They will willfully do so, finding authorities to support their defensiveness.

They will willfully maintain their definitions in the abstract - metaphysics detached from physics, ideas disconnected from experienced reality - because only ideas can be nullified using words, rooted in needs/desires.

They will doubt their own senses, if need be…..they will do anything to preserve their definitions, referring to words, because only then can they manipulate and invert them, at will - their own free-will.

True, most do not have the mind to doubt what comforts and benefits them…genetics is a determining factor, but this has nothing to do with the world beyond subjectivity.

Their methods have no impact outside their inter-subjective collectives.

A half-wit does not disprove the existence nor the benefit of wit….by declaring it so.

1 Like
691

They are realizing that they cannot live in their own subjective world.
They cannot create their own values.
They were lied to.

This freedom is what they crave and they will settle for nothing less.
The freedom of a god.

Can a man live by his own values?
What if his values consist in the virtues of zoophilia and the vices of same-species intercourse?

What if a man decided to live in accordance with his own values that were pro-pedophilia…and adult sex was sinister?
Could he survive with such a value system?
Why not?

If ‘might is right,’ then a real powerful man could, in theory, impose his will on a population and make heterosexuality a crime…
How long would such an ethical system last?
Why?
Because no man can go against the gods…or natural order.
Defining freedom as being nothing less than absolute…supernatural, is how mediocre minds deal with the consequences of their own erroneous judgement calls, and a lifetime of wrong choices.

Comforting ideologies emerge when they become necessary.
Caused by centuries of sheltering, producing compounding mutations that are never culled…neither by predation , nor by war.
What happens then?..illness. Nature re-balances through disease.
Physical and mental. The herd goes crazy, under the effect of generations of unfit mutations.

1 Like
692

[b]Determinism

“We are being inexorably drawn in by a Final cause – the Omega Point – divinity. Divinity = perfect symmetry = the total, flawless alignment of every monad in the Singularity, which equates to the resetting of every monad and the end of a cosmic cycle. This is the moment of Divine Suicide – when all the Gods die. This is Ragnarok. This is Götterdammerung. All the gods must perish. Each cyclical universe must die. Scientists talk of the Heat Death brought about by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There’s simply no way out.” Mike Hockney[/b]

Let me guess: you’ve found one?

“But still, two times two is four is a most obnoxious thing.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And, no, not just underground.

“Every person is a puppet who didn’t pick his own strings and those strings reach back to the big bang.” Sam Harris

Theoretically, let’s say.

“You have not built your mind. And in moments in which you seem to build it—when you make an effort to change yourself, to acquire knowledge, or to perfect a skill—the only tools at your disposal are those that you have inherited from moments past.” Sam Harris

Theoretically, let’s say.

“You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.” Arthur Schopenhauer

On the other hand, for all practical purposes?

“Could the completed life course of such a man turn out in any respect, even the smallest, in any happening, any scene, differently from the way it did? No! is the consistent and correct answer.” Arthur Schopenhauer

On the other hand, for all practical purposes?

693

The Science of Free Will by Samir Varma

Exploring the Facets

In the book, I probe the many facets of this riddle through interdisciplinary explorations. How does quantum indeterminacy relate to human choice? Can subatomic particles exhibit free will? What can traffic jams teach us about inevitability and self-determination? How do cross-cultural concepts of destiny and fate connect to scientific notions.

On the other hand, no matter how skilled one might be in intertwining all the facets one perceives to be embedded in any particular human interactions, there is still The Gap, Rumsfeld’s problematic conjectures and the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

In other words, the gap between what we think reality is and all that we simply do not – will not? cannot? – grasp regarding how the human condition fits into an ontological understanding of existence itself. Or, sure, just shrug that part off as…immaterial? Bringing it all back instead to one or another rendition of God and religion?

No, really, what if that might actually be true? In fact, there are times when I’m convinced this might be the case. In other words, there are [technologically] some things which don’t even seem possible.

Back to this: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Arthur C. Clarke

Really, someone explain to me how it is possible that I can click on submit here and these words “somehow” show up on the screens of everyone now reading them. Including you. The part in particular where all of this unfolds in an entirely wireless world? Or the part where we subscribe to one or another streaming service and all of its content is within reach “in an instant” merely through clicking keys on our computers.

Right, like chaos theory itself is not in turn but one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. What seems chaotic may well reflect that gap between what we think we understand about these things and the extent to which we can demonstrate to others why it is obligatory that they believe the same.

So much of this, however, is all just still sheer speculation. It’s just that sheer speculation is easily enough reconfigured into a “my way or the highway” mentality by the metaphysical objectivists here among us.

694

The Science of Free Will by Samir Varma

Can artificial general intelligence ever achieve agency and consciousness comparable to humans?

But then the speculation by some that even if this were the case it would be but one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. In other words, they assume that if the human brain is in fact but more matter it is in fact wholly in sync with the laws of matter. It’s just that here and now mere mortals in a No God universe have barely scratched the surface in grappling with what on Earth this actually entails.

More to the point [mine] what on Earth does this encompass in terms of actual consequences? If the theory “implies that there are true statements that could never be proved, and thus we can never know with certainty if they are true or if at some point they turn out to be false” how might this be applicable to your own interactions with others?

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and…morality? politics? religion?

Then taking these conceptual interpretations relating to philosophical ideas…?

Down to Earth for example. How would someone encompass this theory in regard to their own social, political and economic interactions? How complete or incomplete can their assumptions be when discussing “the daily news”?

And how inherently problematic – incomplete? – might that be?

I’d say so. But this always encompasses The Gap and Rumsfeld’s speculations regarding all of the things we don’t even know that we don’t even know [yet] about the human brain itself

695

Slavoj Zizek and the Case for Compatibilism
Compatibilism is supported by deep intuitions about responsibility and control. It can also feel “obviously” wrong and absurd. Slavoj Žižek’s commentary can help us navigate the intuitive standoff
Ben Burgis

Right, the “most plausible” accounts. And then those among who insist that would be their own account. Some accumulate assumptions debunking free will while others accumulate assumptions debunking determinism.

On the other hand, philosophers have been grappling for thousands of years now with the conundrum embedded in the reality of brains explaining themselves. In other words, given The Gap and Rumsfeld’s conjectures regarding those “things we don’t know we don’t know” about it.

I merely make the assumption that in a No God universe mere mortals may never come to grasp the full extent to which the brain functions either autonomously or autonomically. In other words, when the author “wrote something debunking Sam Harris’s arguments against free will” how exactly would he go about demonstrating definitively the extent to which he did so autonomously?

When that essay came out, a reliably well-read informant—Matthew Rice, to give the man his due shout-out—sent me a passage from Slavoj Žižek’s 2012 book Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism containing a surprising endorsement of compatibilism about free will and determinism:

"Compatibilists such as Daniel Dennett have an elegant solution to the incompatibilists’ complaints about determinism: when incompatibilists complain that our freedom cannot be combined with the fact that all our acts are part of the great chain of natural determinism, they secretly make an unwarranted ontological assumption: first, they assume that we (the Self, the free agent) somehow stand outside reality, then they go on to complain about how they feel oppressed by the notion that reality in its determinism controls them totally."

“Incompatibilism is the philosophical view that free will and determinism are logically incompatible. This means that if determinism is true (the idea that all events are causally determined by prior events), then free will cannot exist, or if free will exists, then determinism must be false. Incompatibilists believe that a choice is only truly free if it is not causally determined by past events.” AI

Assumptions. Some accumulate one set in order to debunk free will while others accumulate another set in order to debunk determinism.

Then what?

696

The physical body follows natural laws.It picks up and converts varying frequency electromagnetic binary energy waves emitted from vibrating matter into a language the individual interprets and acts upon.The only way all matter can be held together and binary code produced is if attractive and repulsive electromagnetic force interactions NN,NS,SN,SS are balanced.The spin speed of the particles regulating the frequency of vibration which determines the unique binary code characteristics of the matter type also the amount of electromagnetic energy waves (heat) emitted from it.

N/S=N/S produces 0/1=0/1

The individual ACTS on the information received.

697

What about them? You haven’t written a full sentence here. “And then (some noun)” isn’t a full sentence. And then blueberry pancakes. And then the worst dictatorship the world has ever seen. And then an anachronistic diner on the side of the highway.

698

“And then blueberry pancakes”

But this is enough and it’s grammatical illegality does not concern us. We’re talking about blueberry pancakes. Nothing more need be said. Unless they were stolen or dropped on the floor, which is very rarely, one would only ever have to say ‘blueberry pancakes’ in the inferentially neutral indicative mood; there are blueberry pancakes. End statement.

699

So you’ve just given an example of how someone who knows English could write an actual complete sentence that communicates something. “There are blueberry pancakes”. That has a clear meaning, a meaning that “and then blueberry pancakes” lacks.

“And then blueberry pancakes” just sounds like someone started a sentence and forgot to finish it.

If that is what biggy is doing with those weird sentences, then surely “And then those among who insist that would be their own account” could be written as “There are those among us who insist that would be their own account.” Doesn’t that read so much better? I think it does. It certainly doesn’t sound like someone started a sentence and forgot to finish it.

1 Like