Okay, note the most egregious example of this from my post above.
Again, from my frame of mind, it is less what she thinks is true in a universe where [u]every[/u]thing is determined, and more whether she was ever able to not think it.
Is this exchange itself included in everything? If so then what does it really mean to blame here? How is blaming not just another manifestation of nature having evolved into minds precipitating consequences precipitating blaming that must ever and always be in sync with the laws of matter?
She seems to blames me here in the manner in which the free will folks blame others when they are convinced that blame is an appropriate choice to make in an autonomous world.
One could say lots of things. But is one free to say that what one says is not the only thing that one was ever able to say in any particular context, at any particular time?
Who comes closer to pinning that down — peacegirl pontificating about what she thinks is true “in her head”, or neurologists actually performing experiments involving the functioning human brain?
Are these experiences not in themselves inherently, necessarily embedded in a wholly determined universe?
It’s not what steps can be taken but whether you are ever able to choose – to choose freely – not to take them.
And here I just don’t know. Again, I am drawn and quartered. Those who embrace hard determinism, those who embrace the broadest interpretation of human freedom: they are both able to make convincing arguments: debate.org/opinions/does-free-will-exist
What I am most uncertain about here are the arguments of the so-called “compatibilists”. Those who make that crucial distinction between mindful matter choosing to make a move in a chess match and the pieces themselves [mindless matter] unable to choose at all.
Like somehow that’s “better” for us than the position of the hardcore determinists. Meanwhile in “choosing” to move a piece, I am never able to actually do this freely. I do only what I must. But then settle for the illusion of psychological freedom.
You “promise” this in the manner in which a free-will advocate would. Or so it seems to me.
You “try to explain” this in a world where the explanation itself is necessarily embedded in “everything being determined”.
Yet somehow [it seems] you able to convince yourself that your explanation is better than mine. Even though both explanations are but an inherent manifestation of matter unfolding into the only future possible given the immutable laws of matter.
Yes, in a determined universe, I might come to choose an explanation more in sync with peacegirls. Yet, in the manner in which I have come to understand determinism, I would really only “choose” this.
Those autonomous aliens, however, would know full well the crucial distinction, right? For all practical purposes for example.
Okay, but how broadly do you wish to encompass “outside influences”? In the is/ought world, given some measure of human autonomy, those outside influences would [in my view] include things like historical and cultural and experiential contexts. And a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.
But in a wholly determined universe it might be argued that those “outside influences” encompassed every and all aspect of existence/reality itself.
Right?