Determinism

There really is no confusion if we define how we’re using the words beforehand. Free will in regard to the free will/determinism debate means that a person could have done otherwise if we were to rewind the clock. Determinism means that we could not have done otherwise because there is only one choice that could be made at any given moment in time. Determinism does not mean, in the way it is correctly defined, that we necessarily must do anything that is prescribed by nature. It only means given our particular circumstances, we are compelled to choose what gives us greater satisfaction rendering all other choices an impossibility. Free will therefore is an illusion, although a convincing one.

We don’t always have all the information available to us to know how our choices will turn out in the short or long term. You can say we were fated to make the wrong choices but you can also say we were fated to make the right choices. Looking back in hindsight teaches us what works and what doesn’t, which is how we grow.

Questions like this are existential contraptions in my view. So, the answers are likely to be in turn. I’m certainly not arguing that what I think this makes you is that which all others ought to think in turn.

And, on this thread, the part where anything that we exchange here might be construed to be the only thing that either one of us ever could have chosen to post. Letting us both off the hook.

Okay, but what is the likelihood of misunderstandings being cleared up when you flat out insist you will not even read the points that I make?

In cases like this all we can do is point out particular instances of it. And then [over time] decide if our own rendition of it warrants moving on to others.

But there is in turn [in my view] that murky middle. The part where someone insist that others are not responding to their points when what they really mean is this: if someone were responding to their points they would be agreeing with them.

The question bolded above, my question, both?

So you were not saying, via the question, something like 'well, we see why this guy does this? ’ Right? You were actually asking a question, or?

Letting us both off the hook is pretty vague. We can still draw conclusions. For exmaple. You seem to know what it says about me that I said I would not read your response. I then wrote why I did that. You’ve now read that. Did it have any effect. Or do you still think you know why I wrote that. Did it affect the degree of your certainty?

It can seem as if we are not just determined in the moment, but as if nothing we do will affect each other. It seems like when I explain my motivations it has no effect on your certainty or conclusions. Determinism lets you off the hook, in the sense that you and I cannot but do what we do. But if you are unaffected by information, one could describe you as that kind of person. We can still be described.

And determinism does allow for change, in fact it claims it must take place. Not necessarily what changes or how fast.

As I have said. One of the reasons I find your posts frustrating is that you often do not seem to respond to what I write, to the points I make, and often shift the context as if what I wrote was, for example, my claiming to have solved the problem of conflicting goods. I wanted to try letting you know I would not respond, on the chance that this would shift the way you would respond.

I mean, whatever you think of me, I certainly hope that y ou’d agree that over the course of our communication, I have tried many times in many different ways to explain my thinking to you, to point out where I think you are misunderstanding or mischaracterizing me. Here you asked people to judge me by a much less used pattern and determine what I am like. I think I have a fine motivation for this latter choice. But it is as if I had not tried a wide range of approaches over a long period of time.

Hey, what’s this guy like, look what he just did. Seems kinda facile to me.

Agreed. In the past though you wouldn’t even respond. You would call it psychobabble or serious philosophy or would call my dealing with concrete instances of our communicative interaction as not grounded and ask me to weigh in on abortion.

I pointed out that that is not as concrete since I am not dealing with that issue, but our communication is an act we have documented here, and is in fact an interaction we are the two parties involved.

I don’t remember you ever admitting that I was right. Now you seem to get it.

Sure that’s a possibility in human interactions. And following your own point above, it would have been good in all our communication if you had tried to demonstate how my wording seemed to indicate this added conclusion. But you would just label me that way. Or label a large section of a post as indication I assumed you would agree with me if you actually focused on what I wrote.

So ideas about what might happen get written as if they are the case. With disclaimers, but never with any argument for why you think it is true in this particular case.

I also have seen other people make similiar criticisms of your posts. Now of course we all know many even most people can be wrong. But I have no seen you ever actually try to get to the bottom of that criticism to see if there was any validity.

You called my entering into this discussion with peace girl my ‘setting you straight’ with the connotations that go along with that phrase. My sense was I saw where you were talking past each other. And, in fact, I believe you or perhaps it was peacegirl asked people to try to mediate. So I did.

IB: Note to others: What does this tell you about him? And he’s done it before. He jumps into a thread, “sets me straight”, and then abandons the discussion.
SD: We were discussing earlier what obligations one has to discussions. How do you see it?
IB: Again, on this thread, it’s not how I see it, but whether the manner in which I think I see it [here and now] is but an inherent, necessary manifestation of the laws of nature unfolding only as they ever could have.
SD: Well, assume it’s not determined and working within that context, how would you see it?
IB: What I assume in a world where we do have some measure of autonomy, is that “I” is embedded in the laws of nature in the either/or world. Here there are objective truths seemingly applicable to all of us. However, in the is/ought world of conflicting goods, “I” is still no less an “existential contraption”. At least at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. Obligations here are predicated on any particular objective context construed from any particular subjective/subjunctive point of view.
SD: Right, but notwithstanding yet more beating around the bush, what is your subjective point of view concerning the obligations one has to a game he/she started?
IB: What does it mean to “beat around the bush” with regard to questions this problematic?

Jordan Peterson? Is that you? lol

All that word salad in avoidance of the question is what it means. My sympathies to the restaurant staff who must take your order lol. “My order? What would I order in an either/or/ought/is world of conflicting goods where “I” is embedded in deterministic laws of nature rooted in existential contraptions where I could only ever order what I was going to order anyway?” :laughing:

sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> abortion.
sex—> ectopic pregnancy—> surgery.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> birth.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> miscarriage.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> miscarriage.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> mother dies in freak accident.
sex—> wanted pregnancy—> mother dies in freak accident.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> mother commits suicide.
sex—> unwanted pregnancy—> father kills mother in fit of rage.
sex—> no pregnancy—> woman hit by train.
no sex—> pregnancy—> christianity is born.

Where the electron will be is not predictable. Outcomes are not predictable. Rewind it and it will unfold differently.

Right.

I get the difference, but I don’t get why you keep saying it.

Well, they’ve exhaustively proven there are no local hidden variables determining outcomes, so either information can travel faster than light (ie can arrive before it left and see itself off) or there are no determining causes. Pick your favorite absurdity. And because it’s so weird, it’s the most substantiated fact in all of science.

How can you not know it?? If atoms are nonlife and you’re made of nonlife, then you are nonlife… unless the pixie sprinkled some magic dust making you alive.

No that wasn’t me. Sounds like KT.

The ceramic and fully-automatic models of the universe are both absurd.

If the universe is wholly determined, how could you possibly be aware of that? Determinism can only be realized in the context of freewill.

Geese get pissed off, jealous, proud, egotistical, depressed, yet don’t have the brains god gave a goose lol. It’s possible that plants could experience emotions in ways we don’t understand. Heck, it could be possible to piss of the earth. How far do you want to take it? All you are is chemicals; star dust shit.

If that were the case then you couldn’t ask because you couldn’t exist as anything more than a dumb machine.

Why are you so hungup on pre-determinism? It’s contrary to science and contrary to common sense. It could never only have been other than that.

How do I demonstrate red to a blind man? If you can’t see that existence isn’t a thing that can exist, then I’m out of ideas of conveyance. I don’t know what to do.

Indeed, and she – he? – might argue in turn that this post of yours is exactly what could only have been posted in sustaining this thread. But that somehow it is important to note that you “chose” to post it. Even though there was never any possibility that you could have chosen not to.

No one forced/compelled you to. Other than the laws of nature compelling others not to compel/force you?

Glad. But only because she was never able to react in any other manner. Her “choice” to be glad is necessarily subsumed in the reality of nature unfolding only as it must. Given the manner in which I construe the meaning of determinism.

She agrees with all of the points that I make but she still “chooses” to back away from our exchange. And this makes sense to me only to the extent that she seems able to convince herself that I am in fact to blame for not agreeing with her. Really to blame because I should have “chosen” to agree with her.

It simply doesn’t make any sense to me.

Again, she thinks only that which she was ever able to think here. And in my view she has no way given that assumption to know what on earth the future will bring in the way of peaceful, prosperous and progressive policies here on earth.

Instead, she can avoid altogether dealing with my own understanding of human interactions [re dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in an autonomous is/ought world] by falling back on determinism. But a determinism that somehow predicts a brighter future only if others will finally come around to her and her author’s way of thinking. As though they are still somehow to be blamed if they refuse to see the light.

As-if fate being pre-written and all life pre-destined, is not an even more convincing and pervasive illusion?

agreed.

And my internal nature. In other words not just external causes, but also internal ones, but still all utterly predetermined

Precisely. In that moment she could not have reacted in another manner. On another day, perhaps she would have been compelled to answer differently.

.That’s the only possible interpretation?

Can’t one be compelled by unsuccessfuly getting something across, or by it seeming over and over that the other person is not reading carefully - even if they cannot help but do that.

It seems to me you have a go to interpretation. You can’t help that. But now when it is pointed out that there might be other possibilities, perhaps you will not have that same reaction, since information might change your mind. we’ll see.

I would think you can imagine a woman, say, who has had bad experiences with men, interpreting all advances in one way. If she had had a real trauma, or come from a very harsh subculture. She could over time learn that not all men will treat her the way she has been treated.

Perhaps what seems to you like the only possible reason he would back off, is not the only reason. It certainly seems to me there is a range of possibilities.

I really do understand the implications of determinism.

Sure, she might be wrong about what is coming. She might be correctly analyzing the trends. I haven’t focused on that issue.

I question her optimism also. I question in turn your sense that her position must have blame. That seems habitual.

If someone backs off. If someone gets angry at you.

It means they think you should agree with them. That is you go to interpretation. I don’t see it supported that that is the only possibility. I also don’t see it supported that the future will be without blame.

What seems obvious to both of you as the only possibility seems like one of many.

I believe equating pre-destiny with determinism is a big problem because it presupposes that we can’t change what has already been pre-destined to happen. This is like saying “I can’t make things better” so what’s the use of trying. We are agents of change, but only through one choice at a time. This agent or “I” that we call ourselves does not mean that we have free will and it also doesn’t mean that our choices have already been made for us in advance of us making them. It is true, however, that looking back, we were predestined to make the choices we made.

I think iambiguous is confused on this issue. He makes a false dichotomy between the “I” that is embedded in the natural unfolding of matter, and the autonomous “I” that can make choices apart from the dictates of this natural unfolding. It’s all about defining words correctly. No one seems concerned that the standard definition of determinism is misleading. Nature does not cause…we make choices based on our circumstances, and all of it takes place in the present. Each person’s heredity, experiences, and environment are unique to them, therefore the alternatives presented and the choices made are different for each person, but one thing is certain: We give consent to the choices we make. No choice is made against our will (or without our consent) because, like Gandhi, we could die before choosing to do something we don’t want to do.

In typing these words [and not others] what is the difference between “I” being embedded in the laws of matter and “I” being “contingent on antecedent events” that are embedded in the laws of matter?

If the bottom line is “I could only have thought and felt what I do in choosing to type these words and you could only have thought amd felt what you do in reacting to them”, what then is the substance of this distinction?

My point exactly! If in fact that point is true.

But then somehow in making and sharing this same point, I don’t grasp the implications of it “for all practical purposes” as you do. Even though I can only ever grasp what I was never not going to grasp.

But how is your not liking this but another “choice” you could never have not made?

Again, with you it is always this precious choice. Something the overwhelming preponderence of mindless matter in the universe does not experience. But from the perspective of the autonomous aliens [and many determinists down here] it’s always only really a “choice”.

The surreal aspect of the exchange here is that in discussing “nature” – nature as a whole – we really don’t know what to attribute to it. Nature may well just be. It actually prescribes or proscribes nothing because it is somehow encompassed in the entirety of existence itself. And we don’t really have a clue as to how to explain that. At least not wholly.

Here the exchange shifts gears: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194274&start=475

But how do we not “choose” what the laws of matter/nature dictate in a wholly determined universe?

See? It happened again. On the one hand, we would both seem to agree that, given a determined universe, I could not not make it more difficult than it actually is.

And yet somehow in “choosing” to make it more difficult that in turn somehow makes me…“blameworthy”?

This is probably true. But how on earth would someone [philosopher or not] go about demonstrating that it is.

Clearly, there are things we experience from day to day. There are things encountered by our senses. There are things we think we understand cognitively, intellectually.

But in any number of contexts what is there available to us to convey any of it but words? Words to broach something. Words to describe something. Words to assess something. Words to judge something.

But how closely [at any given time, in any given place] are we actually able to connect the dots between our words and our world? If I say, “I am sitting in my recliner in Baltimore typing these words on my HP laptop commuter”, I would be able to demonstrate that to any number of people.

On the other hand, if I say “Baltimore is a terrible place to live” who could I demonstrate that to? How could I demonstrate that in fact Baltimore is a terrible place to live? What are the limitations of language here?

And then on this thread we have to come up with words able to demonstrate whether or not anything that we think, feel, say or do is embodied in some measure of autonomy. Where are the words for that?

Because your idea of all choices already being “embedded” in the natural unfolding of matter is a fatalistic position that seems to mean you are not making your own choices. It’s the difference between: Necessarily, you must choose to eat eggs rather than cereal for breakfast because this has already been predetermined for you (which is a modal fallacy) rather than: You are compelled to CHOOSE (of your own accord or desire) the option that offers you the greater satisfaction at any given moment in time.

It’s how you are interpreting the meaning of determinism that is causing the issue. You are constantly implying that if determinism is true, you are given no choice. If you contemplated what you are going to do first today, you have already weighed different options. Once you make the choice based on the many pros and cons that all of us use to determine which choice is preferable, it could never have been otherwise. You don’t get to omit choice because that would make a mockery out of contemplation.

We do not have free will in a wholly ordered universe, but that does not mean nature has dictated what you must choose before you choose it.

It IS true, so please stop saying IF in fact that point is true. It’s just not true the way you describe it. I know for a fact that man’s will is not free.

You don’t grasp the implications because it was never explained to you.

That doesn’t make it any less exciting. Just knowing we are progressing toward a world of peace based on the understanding that man’s will is not free, is a wonderful thing to know.

My choice to not like this is another choice that “I” could never have not made, but…it was not embedded in a decision that was already made in advance of my making it. Nothing has the power to cause a choice to occur (not the past, not nature, not my parents, not God) without MY CONSENT. It was made by ME based on my analysis of which alternative was the most preferable, in the direction of greater satisfaction. All anyone can do is try to give me different points of view, but I make the choice even if seconds later I regret having made that choice. IOW, you can’t say God made me pull the trigger, or nature forced this on me; and you can’t say this person caused me to shoot him because nothing on this earth can cause you to pull the trigger if you don’t want to.

Humans are not mindless matter. They are not just dominoes toppling over. Rocks don’t have a choice. Trees don’t have a choice. The ability to choose has been given to us because we are able to think through things. Having choice though does not mean we have a FREE choice.

There is no shifting of gears. There is just a more accurate way of explaining what determinism really means. It does not remove anything that we hold dear. In fact, removing the impasse that has perplexed philosophers for centuries, we can now prevent war, crime, and conflicting goods. I know you don’t believe me, and that’s okay.

And I agree with you. If you can’t help but repeat yourself because it satisfies you to answer this way, I’m not blaming you but we won’t make any further progress.

No one is blaming you.

So, I’m suppose to tell you what it [u][b]means[/u][/b] to be obligated – subjectively obligated – to “the game”. Noting in turn what the bush is here and what beating around it means.

But since any meaning I might convey here is embedded in the existential contraption that is “I” pertaining to questions like that, I am already acknowledging that gap between “I” here and now and all that can be known about answering a question such as this given a complete understanding of existence itself.

Again, let’s bring this all down to earth. What particular game in what particular context construed from what particular point of view? What might be the bush there and what might beating around it consist of?

Yes, and in a wholly determined universe all of these interactions unfold only as they ever could have. If time could be unwound hypothetically the same things would unfold over and over again. An “eternal recurrence” as it were.

Same with the subatomic particles here.

But: Configure human autonomy into this and how are all bets not off? In the is/ought world.

So, here, what would the bush be and how might one beat around it?

Because, given human autonomy, beating around the bush regarding any particular set of conflicting goods in the is/ought world, can be explored in turn from conflicting moral and political perspectives.

People are said to be beating around the bush given conflicting assumptions regarding what that means in any particular context. Re abortion “the point” is said to be either the alleged “natural right” of the fetus to be born vs. the alleged “political right” of a women to chose abortion.

So, who exactly is beating around the bush here in arguing for or against the abortion of a particular unborn baby?

You just claim to know it. But how on earth would you actually demonstrate it such that neuroscientists, physicists, biologists etc., all concur that your own take on these relationships reflects the whole truth? Let alone how this assessment is “for all practical purposes” relevant in grasping why we choose the behaviors that we do from day to day in a universe that may or may not be wholly determined.

You claim things like “the ceramic and fully-automatic models of the universe are both absurd” as though the claim itself settles it.

That’s the imponderable here for many. How can matter evolve into life evolving into consciousness aware of itself as matter evolving into consciousness aware of itself.

Or, for others, one of another rendition of mind/God evolving into matter evolving into consciousness becoming aware of itself as mind evolving into matter evolving into consciousness becoming aware of itself.

Come on, let’s face it: If someone were actually able to demonstrate that they grasp the interactions here ontologically [teleologically?] they’d be on every news format around the globe.

“EXISTENCE ITSELF EXPLAINED BY CONSCIOUS MIND AND/OR MATTER”

Is that you, perhaps?

So, this is either something that you think you know and believe is true “in your head” “here and now”, or it is something that you are fully capable of demonstrating that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

That’s all we have so far. And that assumes some level of autonomy.

Tell us what you think is true here, sure. By all means. But don’t just expect us to accept that you thinking it is true need be as far as one goes.

If human brains/minds are just another manifestation of “the laws of matter” we might be thought of as nature’s “smart machines”. But when we think of ourselves as smart machines inventing “smart phones” we don’t think that the phones themselves are calling the shots. Instead, some insist that unlike the phones we do choose consciously to do one thing rather than another. But what if that is all essentially an illusion? What if nature has evolve to the point where matter is able to think that it thinks freely of its own volition but in fact thinks only as it was ever able to think being wholly in sync with the “immutable laws of matter”?

Has anyone on Earth untangled all of this going back to the understanding of existence itself?

Sure, maybe. And maybe it’s you. So, take your assessments here to those who think about these things for a living. See what they say about your own assumptions here. Then get back to us.

How on earth in a particular context is one to differentiate determinism from pre-determinism? How is this distinction related to the assumption some make that in a determined universe all matter [including mindful matter] interacts only as it was/does/ever will interact.

In other words…

This may well be the mother of all “general descriptions” regarding an explanation for existence. How exactly would you go about making a youtube video able to demonstrate that “existence isn’t a thing that can exist”?

Illustrate this particular text please.

I found this a fascinating exhange. I would guess that if I said something as abstract with a number of philosophical terms in it as promethean did, I would be told it was just abstract babbling. But here, since it matches - or seems to if it is correct - Iamb’s positions, he says it is probably correct, no criticism of the widely sprayed vaguenesses. Saying something is probably correct has as much a burden of proof as saying something is correct. More than 50% less than 100%. Interesting.

Then we get to Iamb’s question: how does a philosopher go about demonstrating this. Well, likely the same way both of you reached the conclusion. Would it work on all people? No. But then nothing does.

And then we get to Iamb in a burst of metaphysical confidence…

The first two sentences contain a lot of metaphysical assumptions, contested ones, some implicit in the grammar. But when speaking to a like mind, he can just go ahead and state it as clear.

Yet in the context of…

How can he be so clear on this? How can he be clear that our volume means that we cannot know things? All his doubt and confusion is generated by arguments based on his knowledge. He wil build up arguments based on X and Y and Z…and more? only to say that since we are specks we cannot know? Why mount an argument? Since all the pieces of the argument show the same hubris?

Why not simply be unconvinced?

Once you try to demostrate that we are mere infinitesmal specks, based on what he thinks are clearly metaphysical truths, you are building an argument on poison fruit.

And so repeating that we are small and so therefore stupid or confused - states, it would seem, larger organisms would not suffer - and telling other people that…

Is that how one ought to live?

Ought one tell other people that they are really tiny and can’t really know or communicate things such as those communicated in these threads a good thing to do, if one thinks one cannot know such things? Why would one bother?

It would seem like caution would say: I have no idea if my metaphysical ideas are correct. I have no ideas if what promethean said is probably true. I have no idea if my skepticism and confusion are good things to try to spread. Perhaps I will do something else until I do know.

But without knowing if it is how one ought to live, he chooses to take action - or is compelled, but continues when this is pointed out. He tries to convince others. Why does he need to know how one ought to live, when he decides to influence others and convince them that they really don’t know certain things despite having no idea if this is how one ought to live.

What’s actually happening here?

And I really don’t know.

This is the bush:

IB: Note to others: What does this tell you about him? And he’s done it before. He jumps into a thread, “sets me straight”, and then abandons the discussion.
SD: We were discussing earlier what obligations one has to discussions. How do you see it?

And here is the beating:

IB: Again, on this thread, it’s not how I see it, but whether the manner in which I think I see it [here and now] is but an inherent, necessary manifestation of the laws of nature unfolding only as they ever could have.
SD: Well, assume it’s not determined and working within that context, how would you see it?
IB: What I assume in a world where we do have some measure of autonomy, is that “I” is embedded in the laws of nature in the either/or world. Here there are objective truths seemingly applicable to all of us. However, in the is/ought world of conflicting goods, “I” is still no less an “existential contraption”. At least at the intersection of identity, value judgments and political power. Obligations here are predicated on any particular objective context construed from any particular subjective/subjunctive point of view.
SD: Right, but notwithstanding yet more beating around the bush, what is your subjective point of view concerning the obligations one has to a game he/she started?
IB: What does it mean to “beat around the bush” with regard to questions this problematic?
SD: All that word salad in avoidance of the question is what it means.
IB: [more word salad to avoid answering question]

The one you had in mind when you said “Note to others: What does this tell you about him? And he’s done it before. He jumps into a thread, “sets me straight”, and then abandons the discussion.”

Either you had something in mind or it was random drivel that coincidentally appeared meaningful. Right? :confusion-shrug:

But that view has been disproven by scientific experimentation so exhaustively that it is the most substantiated point in all of science, yet you continue on and on and on, for months now, in stern refusal to recognize that. Rewind the universe and there is almost zero chance it could recur the same.

In that context, there wouldn’t be one. But that context doesn’t exist. The real context is probabilistic.

I was asking why you qualify words that don’t need to be qualified. For instance, I don’t address you as “Bipedal humanoid of masculine variety on the 3rd planet from the star located between spiral arms of the milky way galaxy known as Iambiguous”, but I simply say “Iambiguous” and assume the rest is automatically known.

Beating around the bush is simply avoiding answering a question.

The woman has a natural right to choose abortion too. She could do it consciously or unconsciously, and both processes originate from the same cause.

Alright, let’s play this game: you just made a claim that a question exists. Substantiate it. How do you know the question of how life came from nonlife is an applicable question? It seems hilarious to me to even posit such an absurd inquiry. What are you even talking about? Show me this thing you think is not alive and tell me why you think it isn’t.

Baloney! They’d be ridiculed and ostracized just like every preceding genius.

What is mind? It doesn’t matter.
What is matter? Nevermind.

It occurred to me last night that what you mean by existence of existence itself is the mind of matter. If you investigate matter you’ll invariably arrive at mind and if you investigate mind you’ll invariably arrive at matter. One doesn’t exist without the other.

What is energy? Well, it’s moving matter. So, what is matter? Well, it’s energy. We can’t have one without the other. Mind seems to be the context in which energy expresses itself.

Both.

Define rational men. Is that synonymous with blind men? Anally retentive? Effusive? Who is rational? Who is the judge of that?

You see, this is why I say you like your hole. As soon as someone presents a solution, you dismiss it by saying “How could you possibly know?” as if the solution is defined as too complex to know, so you’re asking questions which you already have decided can have no answer.

By what mechanism would it do that? You think that simply increasing the processing power of computers that one day computers can make decisions and think for themselves as humans do? So it’s a function of complexity? If enough switches are arranged complicated enough then the whole array comes to life? Then why is a worm alive and an iphone not? Theoretically we should be able to situate enough dominoes that the whole assortment comes to life and talks to us, if it were merely an artifact of complexity and determinism.

Sure, how do I do that?

Pre-determinism means it’s possible to predict where a fired electron will land. Determinism means there is a reason (cause) for where it landed, but it’s not possible to predict (nonlocal hidden variable). Probabilism means there is no cause (no hidden variables either local or nonlocal) and where electrons land are an artifact of probability.

Positive exist relative to negative, but what would it mean to say positive exists in a world where there is no negative? It’s meaningless. So existence is simply the relationship between positive and negative. Positive and negative have to be something that are differentiated from each other first, and then we can recognize existence as a thing next. We can’t say positive exists and then negative exists because it’s meaningless.

Your internal nature and the external causes precipitate “choices” that are always necessarily in sync with a reality that could only ever have been. That’s why many choose to convey it as “choices” here instead of [b]choices[/b]

Yet peacegirl then seems to react with chagrin when one uses the word “fated” instead. Yet if fated is defined as “to be destined to happen, turn out, or act in a particular way,” why not use it? All the while acknowledging that we were never really free to not use it. If in fact we do “choose” to use it.

Again, I’m missing something here that she is trying to convey. Something I was never able not to miss given the fact that I do keep missing it.

But only in the sense that on another day the laws of matter would have or will have compelled her to answer differently.

But: how are our interpretations – any and all interpretations – not in turn inherently/necessarily in sync with the inherent/necessary unfolding of nature’s laws?

Same with success and failure. Same with “changing my mind”. I will or I won’t. But, in a determined universe, it won’t be because I freely thought things over again and then freely chose to change my mind.

Or so it still seems to me.

What does this have to do with her experiences [and her reactions to them] being anything other than what they were always going to be? As though her “learning” is not in just another determined “choice”.

That’s the part I keep missing. Okay, no one sticks a gun to her head and says, “learn or else”. But nature is still there to insist she does what she was always only ever able to do. Her “range of possibilities” is still going to be dictated by the laws of matter.

To wit:

What I come away with here is her seeming to suggest that if we want the future to unfold “progressively” we need to read the book she quotes from and agree with her own and the author’s rendition of determinism and “choice”. All the while seeming to acknowledge that we will or will not actually “choose” to do so in a wholly determined universe.

I still construe blame in her arguments. Not all that far removed – semantically – from the sort of blame I get from those who insist I should share their own understanding of God, religion, morality, political values, assessment of nature etc.

In an autonomous world.

On the other hand, I read her stuff and sometimes…sometimes it’s like I’m “this close” to “getting it”. But it just slips away. It’s like my reaction to Einstein’s space/time theories. I’m still unable to understand completely what he seems to be conveying about this relationship “for all practical purposes”. Like the universe being all there is expanding into…what exactly? If it is all there is what is there to expand into?

It just won’t sink in all the way.

And my internal nature. In other words not just external causes, but also internal ones, but still all utterly predetermined
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This is one thing that frustrates me. I agree with you and then you tell me basically what I said. I don’t see why you couldn’t just say ‘agreed’. Or perhaps you really don’t get that I understood. It ends up feeling like you are just in lecture mode. I must not understand, even though I agreed with you.

The reason not to use fated is because it tends to indicate that you are not part of the causes, that the causes are all external. It is more likely to cause passivity.

Of course.

This isn’t answering my question. You had an interpretation. Is that the only possible interpretation?

Agreed. Peacegirl agrees with this.

It means that at some point perhaps you will get peacegirls point and despite the causes that previously made you not agree, then agree. One can change due to new causes. This can happen.

When reading your responses to peacegirl it is as it you must always retain the same response to peacegirl. But since his posts are causes, they mind then cause a change in your mind.

Well, her suggesting that might be part of the causes that lead to a specific future. From my limited perspective, this might be the case.

Well, either you will see if there are other possible interpretations or you will hold on to this single one you seem to think is possible. I don’t know which will come to pass.

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Well, that’s a generous comparison since, so far, it sure seems like Einstein’s theory has been ridiculously well supported by empirical research.

If the “antecedent events” embedded in the laws of matter compel me to “choose” eggs instead of cereal, then I construe “I” here as just another one of nature’s dominos. And any “idea” I might have about it is no less the only idea I was ever able to have about it.

From my frame of mind you see the “choice” I make here in a different way. It becomes important to you in a way that seems no less fated my me.

As I noted to KT above:

…peacegirl…seems to react with chagrin when one uses the word “fated”…Yet if fated is defined as “to be destined to happen, turn out, or act in a particular way,” why not use it? All the while acknowledging that we were never really free to not use it. If in fact we do “choose” to use it.

We think about this differently in a way that you may well no doubt insist that we could never have not thought about differently.

How then is the way I interpret the meaning of determinism any different from how I think and feel about it: in the only way I was ever able to.

And, no, I do not insist that choice does not exist given my own rendition of determinism. I merely express it as a “choice” given my own understanding of determinism. The autonomous aliens freely choose to note that I am compelled to choose to eat eggs rather than cereal. Choosing exist in both contexts. And yet with all the difference in the world.

Well, nature doesn’t dictate in the sense that “God’s will” might be said to order the universe. But that’s just another layer of profound mystery to me. The laws of nature somehow came into existence. And now they unfold as they do only because, well, they are the “laws of nature”.

There is no “purpose” or “meaning” behind it. There is simply the brute facticity embedded in existence itself. And, if the human brain/mind is just another manifestation of this brute facticity, it is no less compelled/fated to be in sync with those laws.

Choose not to call this nature’s “dictatorship” if you will but that doesn’t demonstrate to me how your own frame of mind here is not in turn wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

Think about this. You seem exasperated. You are asking me to please stop saying something that I was never able to choose autonomously not to say.

Now, down the road, maybe I will “choose” to not say it. Who among us really knows what nature has in store for us in the future. In fact on the Science Channel last night they were exploring Einstein’s and Hawking’s contributions in understanding the universe. They were exploring further the possibility that all information – past, present and future – is somehow intertwined in the science of black holes. Such that it might even be possible if you had access to all of this information from the past and present to predict precisely what must unfold in the future.

And the human brain/mind precipitating human interactions is not excluded here.

And all of us here would seem to “grasp the implications” of this [and everything else] only because of what was only ever going to be explained to us.

What does this point have to do with the one I made about Hitler? And “knowing” anything at all here is always going to be what we were compelled to know [and not know] intertwined in nature unfolding only as it ever could. How does the CONSENT of the German citizens back then fit into your progressive furture. How does the CONSENT of those who embrace Donald Trump today reconfigure into this peace and prosperity down the road?

What [historically] will ever be other than what it was never able not to be?

Again, as though the “analysis” that you “choose” here could ever possibly have been a different analysis. In a determined universe, what seems to be “behind” all of the choices that all of us make is nature. Nature unfolding only as it was ever able to.

And, in this sense, why can’t it be argued that nature forced you to choose that which, per nature’s laws of matter, was always ever fated to unfold?

Yes, but the human mind is an evolutionary manifestation of the human brain is an evolutionary manifestation of life on Earth. Some matter evolved into mindless rocks, and other matter evolved into mindful human brains. But all matter is intertwined inherently/necessarily in its laws. Only to the extent that dualism is applicable here might it be argued that mindful matter is qualitatively different from mindless matter. Re either God or some manifestation of nature we are not yet privy to.

On the other hand, if I construe your reaction to me as blame, and I was never able to freely choose not to construe it as something other than blame…what does that mean here? Regarding your point to me and my point to you. Both are the embodiment of a determined universe in which “choosing” is really just the psychological equivalent [the illusion] of actually choosing freely to feel blamed or not blamed.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality technologyreview.com/s/6130 … e-reality/

Heck, I didn’t need science to tell me that LOL

Yawn.

Once again another smartass attack in which the whole point here is to make me the issue.

But, with any luck, there was never any possibility that KT could have posted anything other than this in a wholly determined universe.

The crucial point being the limitation of language [derridaian or otherwise] as it pertains to the choices that we make in either a wholly determined universe or in one in which human autonomy does in some measure exist.

Let him pick a particular context and we can explore the existential parameters of, among other things, the relationship between words and worlds as this might be applicable to conflicting goods and/or the matter of choice itself in world in which the presumption is either human freedom or the lack thereof.