I will say one last time that if someone’s loved one were being threatened if they take one more drink, guess what? They would stop cold turkey. Most people are not threatened this way; and because the drug’s physical and psychological effect is so powerful, it’s hard to stop when the motivation isn’t as strong as the motivation to take the drug (e.g., to get the high or to reduce the pain of unresolved conflict)… but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The only difference between a heavy and a light drinker (for example) is the quantity imbibed, not the quality. We are still comparing oranges to oranges, IOW but just on a different scale.
Again, you show a very sheltered life by stating that the quality but not the quantity is not different.
Gamblers are addicted by the quality, which determines quantity.
Again, showing your naivity, you think hardcore addicts loved one is not just the addiction, gamblers will be assassinated by casinos mobsters before they quit, the assassination of their family members is only an afterthought …
You’re wrong about your proof, you’re wrong about “everybody”
Your proof is false and you are so naive about life that you can’t see how blatantly false it is.
Ecmandu: Again, you show a very sheltered life by stating that the quality but not the quantity is not different.
Gamblers are addicted by the quality, which determines quantity.
Peacegirl: But the quantity doesn’t change the apple to an orange. It’s not qualitatively different except by degree. Once again you’re using the definition of quality which is not what I meant.
Ecmandu: Again, showing your naivity, you think hardcore addicts loved one is not just the addiction, gamblers will be assassinated by casinos mobsters before they quit, the assassination of their family members is only an afterthought …
Peacegirl: You’re jumping the gun. Without understanding how powerful this law is to change the landscape of our world, let me just say that when all drugs are as easy to buy as going to the drugstore (how can there be casino mobsters which indicate there is a market for what they have), along with the causes that lead to addiction that are no more, no one will desire to take drugs not because they aren’t available but because they will be high on life. This is not seeing through rose colored glasses.
Ecmandu: You’re wrong about your proof, you’re wrong about “everybody”.
Peacegirl: I’m not wrong Ecumandu and you’re saying I’m wrong 100 more times does not make it so.
Ecmandu: Your proof is false and you are so naive about life that you can’t see how blatantly false it is.
Peacegirl: An addict could change if and only if something more important to him was a motivating factor. For example, the position he is in is so painful that it’s less painful to stop as the lesser of two evils than to continue the way he has which is the greater evil. This IS an invariable law which means there ARE no exceptions.
Peacegirl,
You mean, if you torture someone enough they’ll change.
I already told you that this was this implication of your argument … remember? (You’re a sadist to sadists)
If you torture anyone enough, especially using 21st century advancements in torture, you can make them do anything under duress… however, the moment the immediate duress stops, they just revert .
Besides, I only need one counterexample in all of human history to prove your law false, and I did already in this thread .
I’m trying to make a point and you’re not getting it because you’re blocked. I’m saying that we only choose options that we consider to be the best choice, under our particular circumstances. To someone looking from the outside, especially if he believes in free will, he can’t understand why that person could make such a choice, but we’re not talking about other people. We’re talking about the individual who is walking in shoes that no one can totally understand unless they’re in his shoes.
You haven’t proven ANYTHING! Amazing to me that you think you have. I am not saying that torture is right. I’m just saying that a person with an addiction could change IF HE WANTED TO. He is not compelled, against his will, to stay addicted. In other words, he has a choice (but not a free one) although it feels like he doesn’t because the pain of withdrawal and the pain of leaving a lifestyle that is filling a physical or emotional need takes an enormous amount of strength. But that doesn’t separate him as compatibilists do by saying he is not free because he is under a compulsion that a person who is not under this duress is not under. This is where they are creating a semantic shift and a big blunder because no one has a free choice, not the person who has a greater compulsion to move in a particular direction, or a person who is choosing what to eat for breakfast. Both have NO FREE WILL.
Many people are confused over this one point.
Just because no one on this earth can make you do anything against
your will does not mean your will is free. Gandhi wanted freedom for
his people and it was against his will to stop his nonviolent movement
even though he constantly faced the possibility of death, but this
doesn’t mean his will was free; it just means that it gave him greater
satisfaction to face death than to forego his fight for freedom.
Consequently, when any person says he was compelled to do what he
did against his will, that he really didn’t want to but had to because he
was being tortured, he is obviously confused and unconsciously
dishonest with himself and others because he could die before being
forced to do something against his will. What he actually means was
that he didn’t like being tortured because the pain was unbearable so
rather than continue suffering this way he preferred, as the lesser of
two evils, to tell his captors what they wanted to know, but he did this
because he wanted to not because some external force made him do
this against his will. If by talking he would know that someone he
loved would be instantly killed, pain and death might have been judged
the lesser of two evils. This is an extremely crucial point because
though it is true that will is not free, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
ON THIS EARTH CAN MAKE MAN DO ANYTHING
AGAINST HIS WILL. He might not like what he did — but he
wanted to do it because the alternative gave him no free or better
choice. It is extremely important that you clear this up in your mind
before proceeding.
Peacegirl,
This is another religious argument that you’re making.
There are two ways that this argument is made by religious people:
1.) consent violation is an illusion because we all “contracted” our souls for this, even though you think it’s a consent violation, it’s really not.
2.) all consent violations by law are for the greater good, so again, it is an illusion or misperception of reality as a whole and as the truth, that your consent is every truly being violated. If you think your consent is being violated, you are delusional, or just incorrect.
Additionally peacegirl,
This is actually how some people really are !!
Some people will read this book, and if it actually matters (which it doesn’t) but it actually becomes a cultural phenomenon - there will emerge a group of anti satifactionists just for the sake of proving it false, they will, always choose the worst possible choice they have available to them.
I forgot to explain why they’ll do this!
Because all of their satisfaction depends on freewill existing.
I assume you’re not good at self referential arguments, which is why you’re in this hole in the first place.
I’m not beholden to the hole you dig for yourself because I define ethics by consent, you have an ethics that has no consent. Consent is a structure of compatibalism.
Again , if I may briefly interject:
A seminal shift in understanding this conceptual difficulty lies with the important and noteworthy event that accompanies this topic, particularly in the years following the American and the French Revolutions.
The semantic shift is only the patent manifestation infestation with which we are struggling the dynamic element consisting of the will, yes, but the shift or the change exhibited thereby can not be a sufficient description of what is happenong, in our minds , that does correspond, even if not as a contability
issue with the primary objective consideration.
Particularly notable is the famous will to power. Here the will and the power are related, bringing this up with a Nietzsche-en scholar who has not posted for a while, the reverse : the power to will.
Here the will to power can be interpreted as a multi dimensional representation, a sort of totality where the will is dependent on it’s interiorization, it is quantified, and the power to will becomes the other side of sustaining meaning through equalization with qualifying it.
A diminishing power, can not sustain a very strong will to make the most useful and desirable choices, just as an uncertain will, not sensing what is best or useful, not only in reference inter , but intra alia, could not possibly interpret the facts as they are.
Free will is not a singular effect, but can be sensed as an affect, for sure, and the self referentiality counterpositions the objective dynamic.
Free will does not exist (this has been proven) but the feeling that we have free will continues to exist. Superficially a person says "I am free to choose this or that. I think that’s what you mean by affect. What is most important for the purposes of this thread is not why people will to power or have the power to will because this is not about dissecting motive. Regardless of what the motive is for any behavior, that behavior is not free in the sense that the person had the free will to make a different choice. The reason this is so important is because the foundation of our justice system is based on the belief that a person who did wrongly didn’t have to do what he did because he had a choice. This justifies the blame and punishment that often follows. The other observation that nothing can make a person do what he makes up his mind not to do, is also factual. These two principles lead to the two-sided equation, which is the discovery itself. I think people are just interested in retaining their own beliefs, not in understanding new knowledge. I know this is a debate forum and I’m here to share something, not debate, so this type venue is not the right one which I’ve known for quite some time. Unfortunately when you are not in the university system, you’re invisible. The author couldn’t get his foot in the door because he was not a member of a leading university. Fifty years later the same thing is happening.
How in the world did you conclude that this is a religious argument. Who is violating your consent here?
Again, where does anything I have said expect people to consent to something they don’t want to consent to? You have come up with the idea that people will have to consent for the greater good which would be a consent violation. You’re so off track I don’t know if it’s possible for this train to get back on. 
And that’s fine. People can do whatever they want. No one is stopping them. This law frees us, it doesn’t bind us to some rule that must be followed, or else. You have no conception of what this book is actually about. And you don’t seem interested because you are convinced you’re right and I’m wrong.
You coined a new word: anti-satisfactionists. 
You are missing the most important point. Once you become a citizen of this new world which will involve a transition period, you will not be bound by the laws of your country, you will not be bound by anyone’s rule. You will be free!!! There won’t be a law trying to prevent you from hurting others; it will be your very own conscience that will prevent you when no one is telling you what to do or what not to do. The reason that you won’t be able to hurt others with a first blow (do you even know what that is?) is that you won’t have the necessary justification which is required by conscience, or it won’t permit the act. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. You are debating a book you haven’t read, yet you seem to know everything about it. Do you realize what you’re doing? 
I don’t need to give consent to do what’s not a hurt to another person. This is not a contract that I must consent to.
[i]There is no mathematical standard as to
what is right and wrong in human conduct except this hurting of
others, and once this is removed, once it becomes impossible to desire
hurting another human being, then there will be no need for all those
schools, religious or otherwise, that have been teaching us how to cope
with a hostile environment that will no longer be. In fact, since
anyone who tells others how to live or what is wrong with their
conduct blames them in advance for doing otherwise — which is a
judgment of what is right for someone else — all sermonizing and the
giving of unasked for advice are displaced. You see, this discovery
draws a mathematical line of demarcation between hurt that is real
and hurt that exists only in the imagination. The hurt of ridicule and
criticism is real, but in the world of free will there existed many forms
of hurt that justified ridicule and criticism. When the hurt that
motivated this behavior is removed, then there can be no justification
which means that any ridicule and criticism that exists thereafter
strikes a first blow, but this is controlled by the realization that it will
never be blamed or punished.
[/i]
What is most important for the purposes of this thread is not why people will to power or have the power to will because this is not about dissecting motive
What is most important for the purposes of this thread is not why people will to power or have the power to will because this is not about dissecting motive
I am not suggesting a connection between will and power to be a basis of motive, in order to dissect meaning, and neither a factual understanding of what a will represents, vis. It’s non existence, but merely stating the underlying themes historically speaking.
This theme has been analyzed for at least 2000 years, but existentially been treated most thoroughly , and modernly, by those who understood the problem dynamically-by method, and not the kind that’s described by Descartes.
Which confirms the onus brought on toward the existentialists.
The will may not ‘exist’, but it is dependent on power to decide, not merely one way or another, but on differing ways of effect and affect.
I am using ’ affect’, the way You are suggesting, in choosing more acceptable alternatives which may be pretty much determined as again You point out.
However, does this necessarily lead to the conjecture, that , such progression in I take it, evolutionary terms will ultimately lead toward more and better understood situations, whereby choices, although determined, may set course for an optimistic view of how intelligence may land us into more certainty, regarding how overall determined choices play out in the larger scheme of things? For that is what I induce from the thesis.
I have no desire to debate, or argue, and truly seek only clarification to an admirable assessment.
Peacegirl,
This is not a proof of determinism that you are offering …
By your own terms in this “proof”, all that has to be demonstrated, is that one person, for one single choice, in the entire cosmos, knew for a fact, for themselves, that they weren’t making the best possible decision that they knew was the best decision.
But that’s not really what this is about.
This is about a commandment from you to stop hurting people.
“Everyone obey me and the world will be a great place for us all!” “No! Seriously! Just obey me!” “Now” “obey me now!” “Now!” “Just do what I say”. “Now” “just do it!”
Billions of people have tried that in human history, you’re not the first.
There’s a problem with saying it is proven. If you are determined, then you cannot know if your reasoning is correct, since you are claiming you must believe it is correct. For all you know you simply believe because you are compelled by a ‘this argument is right’ quale reaction. And so you think determinism must applies to all, but perhaps it only applies to you. Yes, I realize that sounds impossible, but for you know it sounds that way because you are compelled to believe that. Perhaps only some people are determined.
Determinism is a law that applies to all mankind, which is why it’s a law, but believe whatever you want! lol