Fine. But some determinists are compelled to note that what you yourself think here is in turn compelled by your brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter. Again: nothing that we think, feel, say and do – experience – is ever not fated/destined to be thought, felt, said and done – experienced – in the only possible reality in the only possible world.
But the determinists, like the free will advocates, like the compatibilists among us are stuck. Here:
Unless, of course, you are able to demonstrate the optimal or the only rational manner in which to untangle it. To grasp the human condition objectively given an objective assessment of the existence of existence itself.
Okay, note how you would explain that to Mary who has chosen, “chosen” or “chosen” to abort Jane.
Okay, explain this in terms of you typing these words then and me reading them now.
First of all, what you note here is not nearly as interesting to me as the fact that you note it in precisely the manner that the fulminating fanatic objectivists do: “my way or the highway”. “One of us” [the smart guys] vs. “one of them” [the dumb guys].
You do the same thing in regard to God and religion and in regard to moral and political value judgments. If others don’t come around to thinking exactly like you do, they are, what, morons? fools? One of Mr. Chickenshit’s “retards”?
Or so it seems to me.
“The simple fact…”
Again, bring this frame of mind around to Mary aborting Jane, around to you typing those words and me reading them, around to your own understanding of this:
Instead, you are always so much more comfortable up in the didactic clouds:
Now, how are we to determine if this is true? Of course: We have to go word by word by word and see if we can agree on the definition of each one. Is the definition logically and epistemologically sound? After which, if we do agree, then the meaning of the words put in that particular order are “by definition” true objectively.
And then, shifting over to moral conflicts, we can “by definition” determine which human behaviors are deontologically good and deontologically evil.
I did not expect you to have a cogent argument against what I said, so you, as per fucking usual, resort to cheap ad hominems.
THe reason - you are clueless, and do not have a clear idea of what you are talking about resorting as you often do to magical thinking.
As I note for others of his objectivist ilk, if he isn’t embarrassed to post this in response to the points I note above, then I’m not embarrassed to argue that he ought to be. This is almost in pinhead territory!!
Or, rather, so it seems to “me”.
The irony here being that we both more or less share the same existential prejudices in regard to God and religion and in regard to political value judgments.
I’m just a tad more “fractured and fragmented” than he is.
If all you’re saying is that Mary is influencing herself and that this means Mary has no autonomy from Mary… then yes, you are correct.
It is logically impossible to both be yourself and at the same time be free of yourself.
Erm, are you suggesting that her brain is insidiously mind controlling Mary and misleading her?
My point, however, revolves around two assumptions that I may or may not be compelled to make:
1] that I am saying here only what I was never able not to say
2] that being “correct” about something that you were never able not to think, feel, say and do is very different from being correct about something such that “somehow” the human brain as matter acquired the capacity to freely choose
Which most, of course, attribute to God or to the universe as God or to the No God equivalent of God amongst those like Buddhists.
Thus from the perspective of many truly hardcore objectivists, if Mary convinced herself that it was “correct” to abort Jane, she was just as much incapable of not convincing herself of that as she was incapable of not aborting Jane.
Then the compatibilists are compelled to argue that even though Mary was not capable of opting not to abort Jane, she is still morally responsible for doing it.
Then [for me] the truly, truly extraordinary “reality” of dreams:
No, I’m merely suggesting that, in a way that none of us seem capable of grasping definitively going back to how the human species itself fits into a full understanding of existence itself, it all comes back to untangling this:
You keep bringing this up as though it’s important… but I don’t get it…
What do those questions have to do with determinism and responsibility being compatible?
It seems to me you’d rather discuss the merits of materialism or any monistic metaphysics… and how something “somehow” becomes something else.
Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions
Shaun Nichols, Joshua Knobe
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.
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.
The whole moral argument against determinism is bogus.
It is a typical sort of fallacy argumentum ad consequentiam
It seems we have to pretend that free will exists because of moral responsibility?
Sadly if people could act freely without the deterministic qualities, of rehabilitation, punishment, deterrence, and isolation there would be no purpose to the penal system.
The entire edifice of the penal system can only work if determinism is true. And can only work effectively if people realise that determinism is true and design their “Correctional Facilities”, with that in mind.
How is this not preposterous in a world where everything and anything relating to the penal system unfolds in the only possible reality in the only possible world?
Other than in a world where, in turn, Sculptor was never able to not post it?
If hard determinism is true, we realize only that which we were never able not to realize…and design only that which we were never able not to design.
On the other hand, in coming back to what we still don’t fully grasp in regard 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.
…who is to say what is ontologically – teleologically? – going on here?
We all may or may not be just dominoes toppling over onto each other inherently and necessarily; and then going back to however the dominoes came into existence in the first place.
