Why do philosophers dislike predetermination?

I’m wondering the reason for the almost instinctive dislike of the idea of predeterminism among philosophers. Personally I think the religious notion of (very naive) free will is carried over still into philosophy, so much that we have this deep-seated need to defend the notion that “I can do what I want”. Nietzsche pointed out this has a basis in being able to ascribe moral culpability to people who do what are deemed bad things, so we can judge them as personally deficient since after all they were “choosing” always to do those things and thus are responsible.

Never do we ask if their “freedom of choice” was itself somehow faulty and in such a way that undermines the notion of moral culpability and blame.

I think predetermination is a logically necessary conclusion of the basic rational idea that everything has causes, and that nothing “just happens for no reason”. If you carry this idea out logically to its conclusion you arrive at predetermination, the idea that everything that happened “must have” happened that way and that everything that will happen “must happen” that way.

The important piece to remember is that beings themselves do not usually know their or others predeterminations, because fate is a higher order of causality than conscious (finite) beings have access to. We understand that we can produce causes from ourselves and we seem to have some control over what we do, we feel free and feel ownership over ourselves, but we also recognize that our range of options is always limited and we also understand that our own understanding of causality and determination is limited. We often do and say things we didn’t intend to do or say, a clear example that our “freedom” exists within strange and somewhat unknown boundaries and at times we are animated by things we didn’t sit around and “choose”.

In the space of unknowing, our relative ignorance over our own causality and our predictions about the future, comes the possibility to “freely” insert “new” causes than formerly had been the case. This is the real basis of what we call freedom, that we can set one cause deliberately against another in a way that seems to counteract the original causality of things… In this way we can exert influence.

But even this ability to limit one thing with another and to set causes against each other, even with our feeling of freedom, there is always a higher order of determination that would explain exactly why we did what we did, even it we ourselves don’t know this. As Nietzsche said, even the false belief that we are free, even the naive feeling of freedom, becomes a causal participant in our overall (deterministic) causality.

I argue that it is because of determinism that morality can even mean anything at all: we know that certain beings have necessarily certain needs and desires, and we know and can predict how our actions will impact ourselves and others… Upon this deterministic basis of (relative) knowledge and prediction emerges the possibility to establish values and to use values as causalities for what we do, say, think, and for what we are snd aspire to be. Because everything is causal and impacts other things in determinate ways we are therefore morally responsible for how we affect others, for the causes we introduce into the world; the understanding of this transformed human beings into moral agents, fundamntally changing and elevating the kind of determinism we care capable of possessing.

A more responsible and edified determinism, one that includes more of its own responsibility within itself as a causal factor for its own actions, is a more truly free determinism, for two reasons: it is larger/more comprehensive, and it is more itself (begins to understand and respond more to the fact of its own actual nature and reality, in this case to its causal power and therefore also causal responsibility). Freedom is basically a facet of a kind of determinant causality, such as we possess and we call sentient or self-conscious. It doesn’t mean we aren’t determined anymore and it doesn’t mean we aren’t still predetermined according to some higher more comprehensive level of fated causalities and situations which we have no real access to knowing about. But it does mean that our determinism is more edified, expansive, self-feeling, self-directed, honest, moral and capable of responsibility.

So, in a “predetermined world”, if someone says that you are full of shit here, are you or aren’t you?

And what does it mean to be right or wrong in a world where both are just the next dominoes to fall?

^ This above post reflects the nihilist defeatist view on predetermination, which is a false view. It goes something like “well if I knew everything was determined already then why do anything?” That’s like saying there’s no point eating dinner because you know in advance that you’re going to eat anyway, so what’s the point? A categorical error, because the meaning and value of eating has nothing to do with whether or not you know you’re going to eat in advance.

The other problem with nihilism-defeatism is its assumption that “well if I knew everything in advance then doing anything would be meaningless anyway”, when in fact it is the exact opposite: once you understand a cause before it occurs you don’t become powerless over that cause, you actually gain power over it and expand your freedom in terms of that cause. The more you know and understand the more free you become because the more power you have over those things which you can now act differently than.

In other words it is our knowledge and foresight that empowers us into greater freedom by expanding the scope of our determinations “upward” (more comprehensively). You subsume lesser causes within greater causes, this is really what “meaning” means, the progressive rank-ordering of causes against each other or what we call “values”.

If you hypothetically gained absolute foreknowledge over all of your own causality (which wouldn’t be possible anyway), you wouldn’t lose your power and freedom, you would immediately be thrust upward into an even greater order of power and freedom – a new climb upon the continuum of being and thus subject to a new scope and logic of predeterminacy. Beings (meaning us too) are always onto-epistemologically situated between that range of predeterminations below us which we have already overcome, and that other range of predeterminations above us which we have yet to know or encounter. Our freedom and indeed the meaning of our conscious sentience lies in the ability to negotiate between these two ranges, to in fact be literally this “middle space” itself. But this is purely structural; we don’t go around thinking this is how we are, because we simply find it more expedient to operate on the assumption that we have limitless freedom, which assumption empowers us to extend ourselves maximally across that middle-space.

A philosopher has a responsibility beyond simply self-maximization in that way, however; the philosopher must understand and compel truth as much as possible, his “maximization” (his maxim) is not simply to unconsciously drive subjectivity to fill out the middle space between onto-epistemically categorically distinct kinds of predetermination but to actually make this situation conscious before itself: in this way the philosopher pushes being as high as it can go, recreating the original condition of “medial subjectivity as comprehensivity-maximization”, I.e. being itself is changed fundamntally by becoming more aligned to the universal which simply moves being (self-valuing) closer to what it already was anyway.

If you feel de-empowered thinking that you are totally predetermined you can overcome that feeling easily by adding the realization that YOU actually lack anything like a “complete understanding”, so even if you’re totally predetermined that thought itself (the thought of being predetermined) can only expand the range of your being anyway (unless you give in to nihilistic defeatism, which is just a misunderstanding of the situation of being predetermined, a misunderstanding more precisely of conflating the mere fact of predetermination with your own actual subjectivity-range (the sub-spaces, within larger predetermination, wherein causes become self-limited and further integrated within the expanding sphere of conscious knowing)).

So philosophers dislike pre determination because they can’t get over the fact, that it leaves them very little middle space, within which to be able to overcome the catch of either I am full of it or not. They can not ascend to that grey area, for reasons,
that they see morality as legislative, catering to masses, to whom such backward reasoning may not apply, the masses could not reach where the moral
issues do rise to that level, but they are unable.

Backward, because they can see no way that their way of reasoning is in any way -finding and
substituting causes for failed ones on that slippery slope.

Does anyone here know what this might possibly mean pertaining to, say, this exchange itself?

Even the fact that you think you know that everything was determined by the immutable laws of matter is just another domino to fall – going all the way back to whatever [or whoever] set the dominoes up in the first place.

Whatever that means.

We choose to eat. But that we choose to eat is not something that we could have not chosen.

Again, for all practical purposes, in a world where everything that is chosen is only as it ever could have been chosen, the extent to which we choose to find it meaningful is only as we could ever have chosen to find it meaningful.

In other words, the more we come to construe these relationships as you do, the more in sync we are objectively — naturally – with the way in which the world – reality – functions.

As though we choose this autonomously in a world where matter – mindful or not – is wholly governed by immutable laws.

To me, this is all just basically a scholastic analysis. An intellectual contraption. It is an argument that is true or not true depending on the extent to which we agree or disagree with the definitions and the meaning that you give to the words that comprise the analysis itself.

It’s nothing at all like a scientist hooking someone’s brain up to an fMIR machine and then probing technologically, mechanically how the dominoes do fall chemically and neurologically.

Instead, this – apparently – is how a “philosopher” goes about figuring this stuff out: inferentially.

Only along with the “reasoning” part there does not appear to be much in the way of actual empirical evidence.

I honestly do not know the extent to which the choices that I make are within my “power”. I suspect there is some measure of autonomy involved and then I make the distinction between that which I choose that is in sync with the way in which the world does function objectively for all of us, and that which I choose [revolving around value judgments] that is rooted more instead in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Also, the paradox embedded in nihilism [pertaining to value judgments] is that your freedom expands to the extent that your choices do not have to be in sync with the manner in which the moral objectivists insist that all rational men and women are obligated to choose.

As they do.

Philosophers would like to reveal what pre determination is all about, but lawyers have another agenda.

I don’t like predeterminism because it flaunts in the face of probability, relativity and QM. It is as if it steals our souls away from us, yielding no teleology to our existence.

Our teleology is that we exist! It takes a lot for nature to make that happen, and the history of man has worth because it is earned. …nature earns its own existence naturally too.

Does it? Nature the efficient machine chugs away and onward. What have we earned exactly?

Because it isn’t as fun to talk about and infers a no-blame situation (even though it actually doesn’t demand one). It is really the same kind of issue as quantum physics geeks talking about worm holes and time machines.

Ignoring the absolute facts allows for the life inspiring fantasy facts … and blame shifting … and con games of every sort (at the expense of sanity).

Who/what are you addressing JSS? The OP?

Ayup.

… sorry.

That is very astute.

I respect lawyers the most, out of all ‘civilians’ - and I think so does Wyld.
They are the force that makes use of the word in all of its plasmic power, masters of its true meaning, which is power by designating values to standards and standards to values.

Yes-- lawyers can tear down dynasties, and make dictators tremble.

Hahahahahahaha… standards? Are you sure you’re talking about lawyers?

Only in societies that are controlled by laws (not as common as you might think).

Lawyers square off against each other in front of a judge or jury, each lawyer using the full array of reason, logic, fact, rhetoric, and as Fixed said seeking to out-master the other by pushing meaning to its utmost. The standards of lawyers are to apply truths and untruths as much as possible, to fight to maximize human gain and loss. Even when lawyers fight against truth they are innately aware of truth, so they must still battle with it, struggle to see even higher standards and to impose these, likewise with lawyers who battle againsr untruth; you can’t do proper battle with something until you fully grasp it, until you accept its standard and propose a different one.

Language is the medium of human values, in most cases, and where values are meted out and play against each other… even emotion and behavior are “languages” that we are speaking back and forth to each other. Lawyers must master every language possible in order to establish their value. Lawyers both probe and test the system, as well as defend it. Law is the deep construct of society, the means of human freedom against the barbarity of mere arbitrary animality; the entire work of law is centered in and around standards, and of course there are many different standards that conflict and war with each other in purely human terms, there is never a total agreement except in a purely authoritarian (inhuman) context.

wyld -

This reads like an undefended assumption. Is it?

Sure, I can defend the idea.

1. If you accept the PSR then you must accept that nothing occurs for no reason (nothing “just happens”); therefore every thing, every occurrence or event has a branching tree of causes extending out from itself through the present and rooting backwards into the past (since by PSR each of those causes also has its own causes, and so on and on).

2. This moving backward in time of the causality tree-structure is mirrored going forward into the future from the present, because again according to (1) we know that whatever exists, including whatever is going to happen to exist at a future moment, has (will have at that future time) its necessitating causes. Causes push forward in time, factors combining with other factors to produce effects. The effect is the “thing” or event in question, those factors are its causes; each thing or event has more causes than 1 (realistically it would be impossible to reduce a thing’s causality to one one single cause, since every such cause also has its own causes, and so on) therefore we know that the number of causes for any thing exceeds the number of that thing itself. One chair has more than one cause, etc. And the entire idea of what it means to “cause” something involves necessity, else it wouldn’t be a cause, likewise we know that effects are antecedent to the causes which bring them about.

3. These two points above establish the ground on which we can perform the following inference: If causes push forward in time (and they do, by (2) above) and if nothing exists or occurs without causes (according to (1) and PSR) then every effect being necessitated by its causes is the sum-result of the totality of those causes that brought it into existence, and nothing besides (since any “besides” would merely count as another causal factor) and therefore also it is impossible to imagine an event that has any reasons for its existence which reasons do not fall within the causality structure that has necessitated it.

If it’s impossible to imagine any event or thing occurring for any reason other than what is included within its causality structure, this is the same as saying that event/thing is determined by the sum of causes in that structure. Saying determination is PREdetermination just means the truism that effects follow causes in time, plus that “to cause” means “to cause necessarily”.

We can imagine that a cause could have been different than it was*, but we cannot imagine that a cause that did obtain could have produced effects that were not necessarily such effects of that particular cause. If “cause” doesn’t mean also “necessarily so” then causality doesn’t mean anything at all and we must reject PSR.

*Because the idea of necessity is embedded within the idea of causality in so far as the effects produced by a “cause” are necessarily such effects (which is precisely why what were talking about as a cause can even be called a cause at all), is must be the case that all effects in so far as they are effects of causes (which is always the case) were effects necessitated by those causes. Therefore despite whatever we can imagine about causes perhaps being different than they really were in fact, causes that do in fact exist must produce those effects which they did produce, meaning that any “effects” (any things, events, occurrences at all) were necessitated by those causes which caused them. This is just another way of saying “predetermined”.

Again, if one accepts the idea of determination (and one must accept it, given PSR and the very definition of what “cause” even means) then the idea of PREdetermination is simply the fact that determinations are set in time in such a way that effects always follow from causes, causes alway precede those effects which they cause. This is tautological. “Predetermination” is just another way of saying determination.

Predetermination assumes that the meaning and comprehension of how a thing a exists and how the reasons for a thing exist are forever fixed. Determination has to do with the existence and necessity of reasons like you explained. Your two points are taking a step backwards by relying on obscure passages that you take for an all-encompassing philosophy. There’s no true analysis here, no empirical evidence, just semantics and assumptions.

New guy - yes, Lawyers work with standards. They are the one layer of society that is allowed to freely interpret them and arrange them in such ways as for new power configurations and hierarchies to result from it. That is their job. It’s ingenious. Many ordinary people are far too dumb and worthless to themselves to respect the discourse of value and power in its more naked, dangerous and necessary forms.

What’s more, this also shows that the future is equally set as the past, from which follows that the present follows equally from the future as it does from the past.

The human mind can certainly not discern all the factors to which it is conditional, but it certainly is aware, in matters where it matters, where big values such as love power, and life itself are in play, that the future is telling it just as much as the past is.

We’ve called this ‘intuition’, not understanding yet that logically, the future is actually talking to us in very concrete and reliable terms.

It is perfectly fixed what our possibilities are. All that determines our fate is how well we listen to our existence.

As I clarified before, we do not all fully exist; and to the degree that humans dont, they are deaf to distant futures and remain irrelevant blobs of unintegrated necessity (forms of ‘cancer’ perhaps). But when a human does exist, he is clairvoyant in all sorts of ways.

The Philosophy of the Future involves no gambles or uncertainty. It’s just a matter of pleasure in necessity, which, in commonly understandable terms, really is what self-valuing comes down to.