Motivation itself would seem to be just an illusory frame of mind here. To understand it we would need to understand what “motivates” matter itself to interact as it must. Why this set of laws and not some other? Yet, in doing so, we would in turn be “motivated” by the same laws.
How can this be explained other than in the manner in which we must think we understand it?
This is not true for people advocating other positions. The position itself should entail an admission that they really cannot know if they are being logical in arriving at their opinion determinism is the case.
My position is this: I think “I” have some measure of understanding and control [as dasein] in chossing among alternative explanations. But I don’t have a convincing argument [even to myself] to counter volchok’s speculation about mind being matter and matter, in being the same “stuff”, being rooted in the laws of nature.
My argument is that mind is a kind of matter that has never existed. And that, among its seeming properties, is this intuitive sense that “I” am able to choose among alternative explanations. And, finally, that science is in its infancy in understanding human consciousness.
What is ironic then for me are those determinists huffing and puffing to blow my house down when, like big bad wolf and the three little pigs, we are all up on the same stage, our strings being pulled by nature.
It’s theatre of the absurd:
John murders Jane as he must. We react to this as we must.
Then:
John is caught, tried and convicted – or not – as he must. John is executed – or not – as he must. Or John escapes from prison – or not – as he must.
Everything, everything everything: only as it must be.
Is this the world we live in?
…I am not clear on what might be construed as a non-physicalist determinism. If minds are a kind of matter and matter is a kind of energy and all three interact in space-time per the immutable laws of nature then this entire exchange we are having is only as it could have been. “I” either have some measure of autonomy here or “I” don’t.
a non-physical determinism simply means that one does not believe that all substrance is physical, but still you believe all events are determined entirely by past ones. Calvinists would be an example of such a belief system. They did believe in a soul that had an afterlife, but they believed, given God’s omnicience, that this afterlife was already decided long ago.
Well, Calvinism has always struck me as particularly absurd theatre. What we choose to do on earth is merely an embodiment of God. I think: Why do good when the fate of my soul has already long ago been decided. But then I do good or bad only in accourdance with an omniscient and omnipotent point of view anyway.
Huh?
Obviously: I’m missing something here.
I understand that I have effects. I understand that I choose what I do in order to generate these effects. But if I could not not have chosen these things how is that really different from the effects falling dominoes have on each other?
It’s not different.
I will try this one more time, then I will give up.
As far as I can tell you have claimed two unpleasant results of determinism being the case:
- I am just dominoes, everything that will happen could only have happened and nothing else. The belief in/acceptance of the fact of determinism affects my mood negatively because determinism means…
- People have no reason (or even less) to be nice/moral, since everything is natural. The belief in/acceptance of the fact of determinism affects how people will ACT negatively because determinism means…(all acts are natural, etc)
I utterly agree that one is the case if determinism is true. At least for you and me and likely many other people.
I disagree that 2 is the case.
People have a reason but they could not not have chosen a reason other than the one that they have.
That’s the part I get “stuck” on.
I can think, “I love children and I would never harm them”. Or, I can think, “I hate children and fuck them if they get in my way.”
But what I can’t do [per determinism] is freely choose to embrace one point of view rather than another. Or, given contingency, chance and change, autonomously change my mind.
However, what people who reject determinism have is a reason to believe they can [in ways not fully understood] choose among alternative manners in which to think and feel and behave.
And that is when I introduce them to dasein: to limitations in what we can know about ourselves and the value judgments we choose.
The tricky part for me is always this: we can think about it one way or the other but we can’t know for sure if the way we think about it is freely chosen or, even if it is, is the right way in which to think about it.
I do not find it to be the case that determinists are more prone to immoral behavior and I think that given that we are social mammals that even in the absence of a notion of free will, there are plenty of causes to make us be good.
Here you come the closest to nudging me into understanding your point. I see it…but I don’t. It just keeps eluding me.
[Like trying to truly grasp Einsteins space/time continuum]
Anyway, thanks for plugging away at it. There are just those things I can’t fully wrap my mind around. And “compatibilism” is one of them.
Still, determinist are [to me] no less dasein. They choose or don’t choose cruelty over kindness because [as with non-determinists] the life they lived [and the manner in which they have come to understand it] predisposed them to one sort of thinking/feeling/doing rather than another. But, again, given contingency chance and change, their point of view can evolve. But: is our perception of “contingency, chance and change” itself rooted firmly in the laws of matter?