The central underlying point of all relatively sentient posters here is that “Cause” can only be related back to the thing that Is. A things causes can ultimately only be defined in the same terms that define what the thing is to itself. This ‘to itself’ are its causes.
Hence, all I could think while reading Wittgensteins Tractatus was But, dude… ^^
Reading that book is like watching someone drawing a perfect square trying to derive a circle. Im not surprised it boggled the minds of a lot of mediocre ‘philosophers’ at the time.
Hence, all I could think while reading Wittgensteins Tractatus was But, dude… ^^
Reading that book is like watching someone drawing a perfect square trying to derive a circle. Im not surprised it boggled the minds of a lot of mediocre ‘philosophers’ at the time.
What have you written that successfully disproves this idea and at the same time can actually be taken seriously? Don’t dis Wittgenstein ‘dude’ …
There would be no way to “empirically prove” a philosophical idea. We don’t put thought’s under a microscope and measure what we observe there. The methodology of philosophy is quite different from that of science, but that doesn’t mean they cannot and should not work together. Philosophy, thought itself, is inherently speculative, ideational, “abstract”. Semantics and (rational, logical) assumptions are what philosophy is.
Do you have any specific problems with how I derived predetermination from determination, do you see any flaws in the reasoning? Because I don’t. I think if one accepts PSR and deterministic causality then one must also realize that “predetermination” is also the case since all causes / effects are time-dependent as effects always follow causes. You’re saying that predetermination is about everything being “fixed”, but the very idea of causality itself means that effects coming from causes are fixed qua effect. What would it mean for an effect to follow a cause where that effect wasn’t already “fixed” qua “effect-from-that-cause”? It would mean that th effect wasn’t necessary, which would refuse the entire notion of causality to begin with.
You need to do some reading.
First read the Tractatus.
Then read all Wittgensteins other works.
Then read some mid 20th century scientific epistemology.
Then read Parmenides.
Then read Schopenhauer, then Nietzsche.
Then come back to me with what is left of your concern. Chances are you will have learned to read slightly better in the meantime.
Right now I doubt you have the faintest clue what Wittgeinstein revoked, let alone why.
Kenny used philosophically sounding words but in effect he was inquiring if it is okay for him to drop Bible class, in a sense - what he thinks of as predetermination turns out to mean something like social coercion. He is looking for his identity.
Most people do not have ‘selves’ - such people look in all the wrong places; they are too unhealthy of body to look at themselves.
They do not want to be ‘predetermined’ because they do not want to be what they are; they do not want to be ‘determined’, there, at all.
Such a persons coveted “free will” is equatable with “suicide”.
Have any specific suggestions? What other works by Wittgenstein? Schopenhauer and Nietzsche are old news for me, but I do like your suggestions. Maybe something more specific than ‘other works’ or ‘20th century scientific epistemology’.
By the way, you’re right, I can’t read very well, for the time being I’m shit at pretty much everything. I’m barely at 450 words per minute and approximately 70% comprehension so I’m pretty fuckin’ stupid in comparison to you. Thanks for the suggestions, still hoping for better follow up.
Kenny, you might be interested in this, I realized that my idea of causality here is somewhat similar to another idea, the ontogenesis of subjectivity or the transcendental materialism of Zizek or Deleuze, contrary to Kant’s transcendental idealism,
“transcendental materialism:
1-Psychoanalytic/Zizekian
2-Deleuzo-Guattarian/Land
3-And then the question becomes whether Iain Hamilton Grant is a different strain altogether or not
1-The first strain has been laid out by Adrian Johnston – which centers on a theory of the material for the more than material, the subject as escaping the bounds of its material genesis. This theory asserts that the division between soma and psyche is false and that the transcendental arrives immanently (xxiii-xxiv, Zizek’s Ontology). While transcendental materialism appears in Johnston’s work primarily as theory of the subject there are instances where it is applied more broadly.
“Transcendental materialism posits, in short, a self sundering material Grund internally producing what (subsequently) transcends it.” (Zizeks Ontology, 61). The discussion always turns back to the ontogenesis of the subject (this is, admittedly, Johnston and Zizek’s interest after all). Towards the end of the text Johnston continues:
“The transcendental materialist theory of the subject is materialist insofar as it maintains that this thus generated ideal subjectivity thereafter achieves independence from the ground of its material sources and thereby starts to function as a set of possibility conditions for forms of reality irreducible to explanatory discourses allied to traditional versions of materialism.” (Zizek’s Ontology, 275).”
The basic idea is that what we call transcendental or ideal (what I’m calling freedom) is something that the material dimension naturally grows up from within itself and which eventually outpaces itself and that materiality, becoming something originary and new, something that seems to defy its own ground-logic.
The material reaching toward the transcendent, ‘universalizing’ itself as it progresses and evolves, this is how I see what we call freedom and consciousness. This is also why I don’t consider freedom and determinism as mutually exclusive or opposed to each other.
And that is why Marxism still subscribes to the idea, that we live in a post modern utopia, where, the absence of an ideology is truly a need, staring everyone in the eye. Only philosophers can cause this distortion, by seeing this overlap, but the lawyers see
to it, that philosophy becomes a legislative handmaiden. This is the basic tragedy of the birth of
a very early but by now archaic vision of ‘Amor Fati’
‘Thelema’=Will, for the Greeks
A) If something has absolutely no affect upon anything, it does not exist.
B) To affect means to cause
C) Existence IS Causation
D) Causation is determination.
E) Existence IS Determination.
It looks good, it looks “logical” but it is the same as declaring everything in the universe is blue. There may be pre-disposed determinism on the most personal level -ie- the sum of all personal experience (existence), but that isn’t quite the same as declaring determinism traceable back to the big bang.
Some ideas without context might need a bit of refinement.
Can you think of anything that has absolutely no affect upon anything yet exists?
Why would you call it “existent” if it has absolutely no affect upon anything?
And then, how would you know when something didn’t exist if it isn’t required to have any affect upon anything?
The principle of sufficient reason; which states that everything has a cause(s) for its being what it is, that nothing “just happens” for “no reason at all”. PSR is the foundational axiom of reason, without it reason and rational thought as such is a non-starter and we might as well give up philosophy entirely.
There are many things that may (or may not) exist that may (or may not) “affect” anything. I’m having a dream. In that dream there are fleeting images perhaps existing for mere nano seconds. Do they affect anything? Maybe, maybe not. In order for determinism to work, one must make a leap of faith that no matter how small the interval of existence, it is an affector. That is no longer a proof, it is a belief. Trying to take a micro experience and conflating it into a macro universal law is painting with a four inch house brush.
There are many things that exist and are noted by our senses at a subconscious level. Smells, sounds. even slight changes in barometric pressure might be (or not) affectors. Other than comfortable certainty borne of speculation, determinism is far far away from proof of existence or non-existence.
As soon as you can take any cause-effect and all the interval steps back to the big bang, let me know. Perhaps I too will become a believer.
If it didn’t affect anything, how did you detect that it was in your dream?
By very, very far, most affectors are subtle, beneath conscious perception (much as “dark matter”). They can only be known to exist by their accumulated affects upon something larger and more perceivable. A radio wave would be an example.
There was no Big Bang. There was no beginning to the changing that the universe is. Changing cannot begin, only continue.
The proof of determinism is not empirical. It is an issue of ontology and thus of logic. Ontologically speaking, nothing can exist that has absolutely no affect, because Existence IS Affectance. That is not an issue for Science, but for Philosophy. Science can only report on what has affect.
Try to name something that you believe exists, yet you also believe has absolutely no affect on anything.
I know, But his glaring assumptions and appeal to logic as if that is the end all-be all of the universe has to be challenged now and then. He’s been spouting the same line for waaaay too long.
I do apologize for contributing to the distraction. My bad…
This is the thing when you talk about talking about talking about things. One thing James understand is that a piece of language does not actually equal what it refers to.