Determinism

[b]From “The Information Philosopher” website:

In recent years, "free will” has become what John Fischer calls an “umbrella-term” for a large range of phenomena. He says (in his recent 4-volume Routledge anthology “Free Will,” vol.I, p.xxiii):

The term is used differently by different philosophers, and I think that it is most helpful to think of it as an “umbrella-term” used to describe some sort of freedom that connects in important ways with moral responsibility, and, ultimately, person-hood. More specifically, the domain of free will includes various sorts of freedom (freedom of choice, of action, choosing and acting freely, and so forth), and the practices constitutive of moral responsibility (moral praise and blame, punishment and moral reward, and a set of distinctively moral attitudes, such as indignation, resentment, gratitude, respect, and so forth).[/b]

Which would seem to be just another way of noting that there may well be no definitive manner in which to denote what words like this can only mean.

And it would seem to be just common sense that when we take whatever particular meaning is most agreeable to us out into the world of actual decisions being made, the complications begin to multiply expontentialliy the more factors we include: historical, cultural, interpersonal. Nature and nurture. Identity. Emotional and psychological reactions. Etc.

And then with moral and political interactions we go beyond what can be established as either this or that and [over and again] get sucked down into the quagmire that is ought/ought not.

It still surprises me to bump into people who actually imagine they can untangle [or have untangled] all of this in order to assert the one objective truth. Sure, it may exist. But does anyone really imagine it has actually been discovered to date.

Some philosophers do not distinguish between freedom and moral responsibility. Put a bit more carefully, they tend to begin with the notion of moral responsibility, and “work back” to a notion of freedom; this notion of freedom is not given independent content (separate from the analysis of moral responsibility). For such philosophers, “freedom” refers to whatever conditions are involved in choosing or acting in such a way as to be morally responsible.

How exactly would one go about making this distinction pertaining to actual human choices that precipitate conflicting behaviors? You can “work back” from one end of the continuum or the other end. But you will still find yourself making/taking leaps regarding which premises you use.

Where is the set of premises [assumptions] able to resolve it all once and for all?

But then there is only 1/6th of a chance that is true. 8-[

i am not human and alls you need to go into the outside world to verify this stastistic. so argumentative, and the only way your species can learn is if the world is in ridiculous bad shape. if the world was simply mediocre, or somewhat negative, you would be so complacent you would praise it and praise it and praise it. you can only understand extremes and metaphors.

focus on the meaning behind the words not the words themselves. the feels you get from free will is different from 'will". someone has the will to buy an orange instead of killing a goat. someone does not have freewill to kill a goat. its ancient feels.

What could possibly be clearer than that, right?

On the other hand, that is basically my point, isn’t it? There would seem to be any number of impenetrable obstacles to finding the sort of clarity we would need in order to nail it all down once and for all.

freewill implies some sort of magical orthodox christian sillyness outside the bounds of causality and reality. this is why you hear people say “cartoon characters are not real” this is because they have a deluded perception of what reality is. people live on through memes, humans are conglomerates of bacteria, imagination is tangible, anything that can be understood or perceived is real. freewill implies something outside the bounds of causality and inertia, arbitrary, magical decisions that are holy and arise from nothing, yet are even more magical than spontaneous random action. this is why we refrain from such terms and instead say “the will to this and that”.

discussion of “free will” usually results in an infinite feed back loop of question dodging, circular reasoning and falling back on false arguments. therefore the word freewill has an association with infinite feed back loop answering nothing questioning nothing verifying nothing simply regressing further and further on itself with no end.

Okay, let’s suppose that all of this is true. Could you have posted anything other than what you did post above? Could I have posted anything other than what I am submitting now?

In other words, how does your rendition of it work “for all practical purposes”?

you gotta get to the roots and basics. human culture is nothing special, just a conglomerate of words and spaces. what is special about it is sheer amount of mediocrity and repetitivity. this makes the drama shine. if one were to have a universe type concsiousness, love would just be, fear would just be. instead human existence has a special kind of drama, word drama, instead of just love fear and beauty and ugliness, we have a special narrative to add to the drama, “we are going to the prom with so and so.” a planet does not really blame itself for other planets not colliding with it. if only if only the planet were a better planet, or bigger planet the planet would have mated with the other planet. nonono. see, when you look it at like this, things just begin to fall into place, like tetris. at the same time, we must not throw in the towel, and act like passive women, saying nothing can be done. a planet must rotate on its own axis.

Hmm. What in the world does that answer have to do with these questions:

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Okay, let’s suppose that all of this is true. Could you have posted anything other than what you did post above? Could I have posted anything other than what I am submitting now?

In other words, how does your rendition of it work “for all practical purposes”?[/b]

if you caught my drift, a planet doesnt ask “could i have orbitted the sun any different”? if it were human it might say “my moon made me drift closer to venus, i am such a cool cat.” or if it were gay, mars.

I’ll file this one under, “Sorry I asked”. :wink:

The metaphysical requirement. Isn’t that where we all get tangled up in language here? To what extent can the human mind [employing language employing logic] create an argument that captures the relationship between free will and moral responsibility such that we can take this argment out into the world and intelligently discuss what exactly goes on when Mary chooses to have an abortion. Or, less the moral element, when Hillary Clinton chooses to run for president?

The minds of animals further down the evolutionary trunk are always fascinating to consider here. Somehow “nature” has programmed them to make choices in the manner in which I always imagine the human mind would make choices in a wholly determined world.

Only with non-human animals the element of morality is basically missing. The lion eats the man because the lion is basically on automatic pilot. Hunger is the only motivation. What it chooses revolves entirely around necessity. But how exactly is life here programmed by nature to actually accomplish this?

Consider:

An octopus has the capacity to camouflage its body [through both color and texture] to blend seamlessly into many different environments. How is it able to do this? If human beings had this capacity it would be imagined that the mind would note the color/texture of the new environment and make the necessary adjustments. It would self-consciously choose the appropriate combination of colors and textures. But the octupus would not seem to be self-conscious in this sense at all. And yet it’s brain is able to make these crucial adjustments as though in some manner it were.

didn’t know humans had morality either. they eat animals but unlike the lion torture them in cages for years. id say humans have a kind of inverse morality, whereas the lion doesnt argue and pretend to be good, the human will stand up and try to defend their own holocaust as moral behavoir.

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Scare quotes here are always tricky. And that is because the meaning of the words inside them can become rather convoluted when we try to pin down precisely what the person using them is trying to convey. Thus what is the precise distinction between “free” and “will” inside the quotes and free and will that stand alone?

And yet over and again in arguments/analyses like this the discussion will go on and on without once situating this distinction in actual human conflicts – disputations that result in behaviors chosen as a result of clashing value judgments. The part “down here” that result in moral judgments. That can then result in blame and punishment.

And the word “random”. It would seem that in a wholly determined world nothing is ever random. It might seem that way to some, but everything is always accounted for by the laws of matter. And by everything that would seem to include every mental, emotional and psychological variable that compels us to choose this rather than that – whether it is Mary “choosing” to abort her baby or Jack “choosing” to rape Jane. Once the scare quotes are employed the “choice” would seem to be only an illusion given the manner in which the libertarian above construes these things.

Something occuring “by chance” means only that any partiocular individual has but so much understanding of the world around her. And thus only so much control. Mary might have become pregnant “by chance”. But the pregnancy itself doesn’t just happen “out of the blue”. It just means that she had not intended to become pregnant but did. And now she has to decided [willfully or not] what to do about it.

[b]In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.

Daniel Dennett[/b]

Back to this:

How, in a wholly determined world, are we really any different from the lightening bolts?

It would seem that how we perceive determinism is only how we ever could have perceived determinism.

And that would seem to be as predictable per the immutable laws of matter as the lightening strikes themselves.

Again, the only distinction being that unlike the lightening bolts the matter that has evolved into mind is able to delude itself into thinking that crossing or not crossing the field is something they can choose willfully.

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Intuition is defined as “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.”

Of course, just because you happen to have an intuition that such and such is true, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. Instead, intuition is more like a frame of mind that somehow intertwines the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind into a more or less perceptive “hunch” that involves both the faculty of reason [it must figure in here somewhere] and the more deep-seated emotional reactions – the objective, the subjective and the subjunctive.

And then there is the role that the “id” plays here.

But: however this might “work” – work “in reality” – it would still seem [to me] that if we live in a wholly determined world that reality would/must include intuition as well.

How then could discussions into the nature of intuition “have a major impact on debates about the compatibility of responsibility and determinism”…if in fact the discussions themselves are only what they could ever have been in a determined world?

From “Einstein’s Morality”
by Ching-Hung Woo

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This part I can understand. If all is governed by the immutable laws of nature, it certainly makes sense that this includes the phenomena embodied in human interaction.

As for the parts embedded in quantum interaction, Einstein suggested that what appears to be random is only a reflection of our lack of understanding of the deeper reality.

And that will, perhaps, always be there: the parts that we don’t even know that we don’t even know yet. Ultimately though, all philosophical quests come back to this.

But then comes the part about determinism and moral responsibility:

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This would seem to be just one more rendition of “compatibilism”. And I am still unable to “wrap my mind around it”. It just doesn’t make sense given the manner in which I think about these things.

Whether we focus on “retributive punishment” or are “guided by the welfare of mankind”, we are still doing [b]only that which we could not not have done[/b].

There does not seem to be a way in which to extract ourselves from that which, “for all practical purposes”, must be. Instead, some are able to “trick” themselves by creating this distinction between two different sorts of cause and effect that [to me] seem to be just a word game “in their heads”.

This in other words:

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This distinction seems like bullshit to me. Whether we call the laws of matter a manifestation of “prior causes” or “coercion”, we still do only that which we have always been “determined” to do.

As for so-called “self-affirmed” values, what the fuck can that really mean if the “self” itself is only as it could ever be?

Again, the compatibalists may be on to something here, but it has never seemed reasonable to me. So, I am back to either accepting or not accepting that it could never have seemed reasonable to me – in order that “I” be in sync with the immutable laws of matter. At least here and now.

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But what here [including the words I am typing and the words you are reading] has anything to do with “ability”? As though what turns out to be could ever have turned out any other way. We “choose” for it to happen, but we really didn’t choose for it to happen.

But then I can see how a belief in this sort of deterministic approach to reality can be comforting for some. After all, they can’t really be held responsible for their fucked up, miserable lives because, well, because.

Hi everybody, it’s been a long time. I was wondering what position most people favor: libertarianism, compatibilism, or determinism? Obviously, I stand behind determinism because that’s what this thread has tried to demonstrate. Based on new evidence from neuroscience, has anybody changed their position regarding determinism? I realize that determinism poses a threat for some, because they believe there would be no accountability for one’s actions since they could say “I couldn’t help myself because my will is not free.” But this is a misunderstanding for the knowledge of determinism actually increases responsibility, when extended accurately.

Hello peace! Peacegirl.

I go with compatibilism since I feel that society as a whole has no real ability to live up to libertarianism , nor the nerve for always blaming others for their shortcomings, which is the unfortunate result of a wholly determined life.

Even constitutionally people prefer some element of self autonomy, and that is the problem with marching into this coming brave new brotherhood .

It has a sloppy design and a disk much to be improved upon. It is based on wish fulfillment , that the superintelligent machine will not let it get to its head. But since it is the head where it is , the doubt is great.

So for me, the ‘should’ trumps the ‘is’.
And this is really where we stand socially as well, we hope things will work out. What needs to be done is positioned on what should be done, whereas, what is done is not always desirable as the best choice retrospectively.

This is where definition is important to clarify. Determinism, in my way of defining it, does not mean that we all become robots with no self-autonomy or the ability to make choices. We all have the ability to make choices; they just aren’t free choices.

The best choice for whom? Obviously, when a person makes a choice, he is making the best possible choice under his particular circumstances. For example, when a person steals because he has no money to pay for food, society might not like his choice, but for him the choice was necessary.

What if all of the “shoulds” are causing a reverse effect than what society is aiming for? Please understand that determinism does not give people a free pass to hurt others with the excuse that they couldn’t help themselves. It is quite the opposite. The knowledge that man’s will is NOT free (when extended accurately) prevents those very acts of crime that required blame and punishment in our years of development.