For all any of us know. To wit:
…how does the proponent of free will get around the arguments the volchoks make about matter being the same “stuff”; and all rooted in the laws on physics?
I don’t have an argument for the best versions of these. I have repeatedly said that ‘physical’ is a meaningless term and also that we are in the middle of the history of science, not the end, so final proclamations seem weak to me.
That is basically my point to volchok: just because I don’t have a definitive argument now doesn’t mean there isn’t one. And science is just beginning to explore this particular characteristic of the human brain. And the brain is surely the most complex matter around. Sans God.
How does consciousness grapple with explaining what consciousness itself is? What does it even mean for “I” to know this?
Basically the determinist has to argue that there are two possibilities: random and completely controlled events. Or what is basically a combination in stochasitic processes. We use deduction from here and decide free will is not supported by either. Fine. But science has thought it understood the range of possibilities before and then found out this was not the case.
Yes, the determinist has to argue this. As for a random universe I simply cannot wrap my mind around it. Even the quantum folks are still baffled over this. And that, perhaps, is just in this universe.
…the determinist necessarily sees everything as “natural”. Being raped or not being raped is merely human dominoes falling in one direction and not another. Same with our reactions to rape.
Sure, the determinist could ARGUE like this. But as social mammals I see no reason for them too. And, in fact, non-determinists, for example religious ones, have justified rape either openly or indirectly with victim blaming coded messages.
But doesn’t reason enter into it here only as an inherent manifestation of matter evolving into it per the immutable laws of matter? The “mental” is merely matter that has been manipulated [molded] by nature into imagining it is not manipulated at all. That it is “free” to choose its own way.
And non-determinists like me root rape and our reactions to it in dasein—in daseins rooted [in unimaginably complex ways] in nature intertwined [in unimaginably complex ways] in nurture.
Human biology is what it is. And human mental, emotional and psychological reactions are what they are. These, in my view, are the implications of determinism the volchoks don’t really own up to. They keep harping about how we choose and the dominoes don’t as though it really makes any difference if we cannot choose to choose something else instead.
I find that most people do not actually try to see what ideas do in situ. What is actually happening, not what should happen given the words in the mind and the logic in the mind, etc.
I get stuck on the idea that, given determinism, to choose one thing as opposed to something else is just an illusion. What is happening actually is what actually must happen. “I” have nothing to do with it other then in having acquired matter in my brain that evolved to the point I can note this. But I cannot not note this.
If that works for you, great. But if I believed that choosing to be kind and good is something I could not not have chosen then I recognize that those who choose to be rotten sons of bitches are in the same boat. I’d like to believe instead that “I” had something to do with it. While acknowledging the manner in which “I” is always embodied in dasein—and in all of the things “I” do not understand or control.
But notice what your focus is on here: your focus is on how you feel about the whole situation. You have not argued that you would no longer strive to be kind. Or to put this in determinist terms. You are not arguing that believing in determinist would CAUSE you to be more cruel or less caring. And this was the issue. I absolutely agree about the emotional effects of the non-existence of free will, but that I would end up being meaner, I don’t think so.
But where does how I think about the whole situation stop and how I feel about it begin? Or the other way around? I can imagine someone raised in an environment where being kind and good [at least to each other] is the functional norm. But I can also imagine an environment in which you come to assume it is basically a dog eat dog world and being kind and good is a weakness you just cannot afford.
These things are always situated [for each of us] in a particular world rooted in a particular time and place. Evolution [human biology] provides us with the capacity to be either kind or cruel. Does it provide us with the capacity to choose one over the other? Does it provide us with the capacity to encounter new experiences, new relationshipos, new points of view…and change our minds?
Yes. But to what extent is any of this done autonomously?
I don’t understand the “determinist terms” here. If determinism is true, I am kind or cruel per nature’s design. Just as the tides ebb and flow per nature’s design. What is the difference other than, unlike the tides, I embody the illusion of being able to freely choose one over the other?
To wit:
You:
If I was utterly convinced determinism was the case, I would not then decide to act meanly to children.
Me:
Here you lose me. If you are “convinced determinism is the case” then you are deciding only what you must decide. It’s only the illusion of choice.
So we change the language into determinist. I don’t think that if I was convinced determinism was the case, this would cause me to treat children or anyone else less well. How bout you?
If I was absolutely convinced of determinism – if science demonstrated it beyond all doubt – I would think: I may be kind toward children, I may be cruel. But my choice to be one or the other is mine only in the sense that a lightbulb chooses to be on or off depending on the position of the switch.
In some ways that might comfort me, in other ways it might not. But so what? My reaction is also just a manifestation of the ineluctable law of matter.
Again, “compatibilism” here is still illusory to me. The bottom line: what happens must happen.
I interact with others ambiguously, precariously. I see good reasons for endorsing many conflicting sides in most moral and political issues. I make my leap knowing that, had things been different in my life, I might not have.
As, in other words, an ironist.
YOu mean if you became convinced determinism was true you would no longer be an ironist, no longer see conflicting sides in moral and political issues, etc.?
Yes, but I would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s terminator. I would make choices but only as I was programed to by nature.
Some “choice”, eh?