This is actually the entire correct argument against determinism, as usually conceived.
I applaud such concise statements. This particular replaces and supercedes countless weighty philosophical volumes. It also demonstrates why philosophy is mostly about language.
Jus’ sayin’…
Where is the “conflation and confusion”?
It’s analogous to “The Purpose of Life” or “The Meaning of Life”. “Purpose,” if it is to make any sense, implies a what or a who for which there is a purpose. “The purpose” of anything is its purpose to someone or some entity that has at least some qualities similar to those of sentient beings (if not exclusively humans). To take that being out of the statement and talk of a purpose external to some being makes no sense.
Humans, among other sentient beings, can make determinations, because we can have intent. We can determine events, we can cause events. To speak of determinism anthropomorphises the world. Absent God (a god with some human-like qualities, a personal god, a god with a personality - a theistic god), the notion of determinism has a problem more serious than that is is nowhere demonstrated - it makes no literal sense. If you can grow a science out of theism, you don’t really need the science. You just need a messiah.
Causality is likewise, when made a universal quality of the universe, an antropomorphisation.
A while ago i wondered what cause and effect are real in the case of math.
First, an equation : 1+1=2
And the result is : 2
In this way, the equation makes the result, and the result is the effect, not the cause, of the equation.
More than one equation can give the same result, example:
3+5+1 = 9
2+7 = 9
How is this at all relative?
Equations are like rules. Morality is also supposed to be about rules.
Food + Swimming + Friendship = Good
Food + Construction Work = Good
Good = Good
Evil = Evil
It may be simple to some of you but a lot of people live like this.
Morality is one big equation of sacrifices, measurements and contemplations.
I see.
People all too often confuse “purpose” with “cause”, extrapolating on their common relationship. But I seldom see people confusing willful determination with aberrant determination.
Each situation determines the next. I can’t envision anyone confusing that statement with “Each situation ponders and chooses which situation to cause next”, except by quantum physics geeks intentionally promoting multiverse worship. Although in Ancient India and the Middle East, such anthropomorphisms were very common (and are still a very large part of their language, much as gendered words throughout Europe).
Your God is your situation (partly intelligently responding, partly not, as with all intelligence).
Your god is your situation?
Is that a 70’s R&B/Gospel lyric?
Hi Faust, long tome no see, how’s life treating you…?
I see you’re still firing broadsides at people from the USS Semantics. 
I’m good, Tab. I thought you were dead. The USS Semantics will never run out of ammo.
Rumours of my death were exaggerated.
Determinism implies patterns. Cause and purpose can be understood as having intrinsic patterns, developing, or imminently forming. The concept -
consciousness, which has likewise intrinsic functional
equivalents, is imbued with the possibility of developing languages. Languages are a means of identifying things, and communicating them, in
accordance to the rules of language.
Causes and effect, subscribe to such rules and, these rules in turn, subscribe the causes, then the effects of
conscious identification.
There is nothing anthropomorphic in these processes,
determination is a procedural sequence of cognitive
events, where consciousness is effected by causal schematics. Determination seemed built into the progressive need to identify conscious effects toward
lessening feedback loops of information, where, less
and less referencial loops imply more and more inclusive referents. If this process is carried on, the final cause is simply the all inclusive, albeit
totally referential and all inclusive, unthinkable ‘thing’ , we call God.
This can not be argued against, because God merely is a convenient and mysterious thing, which can not be further reduced, referenced, or discribed.
Nothing anthropomorphic about a sequence of cognitive events…
Depends on the nature of the cogniserizer. That’s totally a word btw. Crustaceanomorphic, if there’s crab aliens around maybe.
Life is generally a ‘who or a what’, so why can’t it self-designate a purpose…? ‘Meaning of life’ is a poser though, I’ll admit.
I think if you’re picking bones with ‘causally determined’ you’ve stopped and tried to step out of something which cannot be stopped, nor stepped out of. In a causally determined universe essentially, there’s a boom, then sometime afterward, a kinda imploded splatty sound, and nothing in between except dominoes.
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t. (stickler confessions…)
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On Mondays.
But never on Sundays …
You offering? Turd study Spanish!
Tab - I have no beef with cause and effect. I just see no reason to think that it obtains everywhere and always. Nor to think that causal chains are connected anywhere near to the extent to allow a deterministic universe. Maybe I’m just missing something. Or maybe others are just making stuff up.
Maybe I’m thick, but I gotta ask for an example of a time or a place where cause and effect don’t occur in the mundane fashion I observe day to day.
Causal chains are a bit of a linear conceptualization, causal webs only slightly better, a sort of gloopy mess with pools, dislocations in time and space, causes waiting to happen, recursions and refluxes better still. We’re either physical parts of the universe, or not.
Or are you talking about non-physical constructs, like money etc…? I suppose a case could be made to exempt those on technicalities, though an equal and opposite case could made based on their (physical) representations in the brains of the collective.
Quantum gets a bit sketchy with superpositions and observers, but the observer doesn’t need to be sentient, conscious or allegedly free-willed, a completely deterministic brick wall in the right place and time will do just fine as well.
Sorry if any words were hurt in the creation of this post.