Two points:
1] I don’t know that it leads to a dead end. I only know that “here and now” I am not myself privy to the argument that does in fact resolve it.
2] my argument is aimed more at those who insist that not only has it already been fully resolved, it has been fully resolved by them
The objectivists in other words.
That’s why I’m saying to take a different route. Get back into objectivism… then trying moving back out of it through an entirely different route.
How then would one actually go about doing this in regard to particularly contentious conflicts like clitorectomies, abortion, homosexuality, animal rights, gender roles etc…
How would you do it? In other words, for all practical purposes pertaining to a particular context in which your values come into conflict with anothers.
But as I see it, they are still laws of nature that could just as well force us to to arrive at fallacious and delusional conclusions, shared among us all as they may be. This is why I say that the argument about being stuck in a deterministic universe applies even to mathematical logic and concrete sensory experience.
This makes sense to you. But it makes sense to you only because there was never any possibility that it would not make sense to you. So, what does it mean for another to suggest that it is fallacious and delusional when there was never any possibility in turn that they would not say this?
What it means is irrelevant. In regards to living in a deterministic universe, what we are able to come to grips with on the “is” side of the “is/ought” divide and what we are able to come to grips with on the “ought” side of the “is/ought” divide should make absolutely no difference to you.
Yet how in a wholly determine universe would I really have any autonomous choice in regard to deciding whether it makes a difference to me. If I think that it does then I was never going to think that it doesn’t. The “is/ought” world – the conflicts in it – are just an illusion. Every human interaction is necessarily subsumed in the immutable laws of matter.
If on the “ought” side, you can only conclude that, in our moral convictions, we come up with existential fabrications due to the fact that, living in a deterministic universe, it could not have been any other way, then that exact reasoning can be carried over to the “is” side, and you should be concluding exactly the same thing. I’m say that, I’m afraid, your dilemma applies even to “is” questions.
We “come up with” only that which we could never not come up with. We conclude only that which we were never permitted not to conclude if we are to be in sync with the laws of matter.
Then we understand the meaning of “stuck” in different ways. My meaning revolves around a universe in which I was never, ever going to not be stuck in it. All I can then imagine is this universe unfolding in such a way that “in my head” I come to think/believe that I am not stuck in it. But even that is only as it ever could have been.
So, actually being “stuck” in a universe is just another frame of mind that matter has propelled me to ponder in different — but no less determined – ways.
Then we come back to the meaning of “choice”.
Or: Then we are back to determining the extent to which the meaning that we attach to “choice” “here and now” is or is not the only meaning that we were ever permitted to impart given that we are permitted to impart only the meaning that is rooted in whatever [or whoever] set into motion the laws of matter.
And then the extent to which they either are or are not truly immutable.
As I said above, the ability to violate the laws of nature is not the only way to define “choice” or “freedom”. Most people, when they talk about acting “freely” are not supposing they can defy the laws of nature–they simply mean that when they have the experience of making a “choice” they’re actions unfold exactly in accordance with what they feel they are “choosing” to do.
Exactly: “Choosing”.
The difference between being free or being forced has nothing to do with whether or not things could have turned out differently, but where the forces that determine the outcome of our actions originate from–do they originate from within or without? Are we the force that determines our actions, or is it a force that comes from outside ourselves?
Here however we are clearly stuck. Why? Because in order to actually answer these questions we would have to be cognizant of that which wholly encompasses Reality and Existence itself. And surely one of the biggest mysteries here by far is where the brain ends and the mind begins, where all that is “out in the world” ends and where all that is “in my head” begins.
In other words, the truly enigmatic, perplexing connundrum embedded and then embodied in the self-conscious “I”.
For example, a purse snatcher sneaks up on a woman and tries to yank her purse from her hand. She resists. The purse snatcher is a force that works against the woman, who is herself a force acting in resistance. The former defies the woman’s will to keep her purse. If he succeeds, we say she was robbed against her will. But suppose the same woman earlier that day handed her purse over to her husband for safe keeping. It could be construed as more or less the same action: she relinquishes her purse from her possession to another man. But in one case, she does so against her will, in the other case, she does so according to her will.
Any way you cut it, however, they are all forces working in the fray of a deterministic universe, and one could still say things could not have been any other way.
Okay, assemble a bunch of us in a room. We are watching two film clips. In the first a woman is robbed of her purse against her will. In the second she hands over her purse willingly to her husband.
We are asked to react and we do.
Now in a deterministic universe every single thing that happens above was never ever not going to happen.
From my frame of mind once that is understood then it is understood in turn that our exchange here on this thread is in exactly the same boat. The only boat there is.
And then I am back to concluding that you are explaining something here of fundamental importance about “compatibilism” that I am simply [still] unable to fathom.
Bringing this back to your dilemma, the only way you can get away with saying that you are “stuck” in your dilemma, always doubting the truth of objectivist-sounding arguments, is if you were actually trying to be persuaded by them, eager to be open to them, but some outside force (as if someone else had control over your mind) was preventing you.
If “I” exist in a wholly detrmined universe then thinking and feeling that I am “stuck” here is just part and parcel of Reality. It is just another domino toppling over onto yours toppling over onto mine.
And at the very core of this problematic enigma is the understanding of what it means to “try” to accomplish something that is only ever going to be what it was never not going to be.