Determinism

Because having laws is what helps determine the behavior of people and if it “flew in court” it would undermine the deterrent. I think the legal system holds its nose and looks the other way on this.

The Brain on Trial

[i]DOES THE DISCOVERY of Charles Whitman’s brain tumor modify your feelings about the senseless murders he committed? Does it affect the sentence you would find appropriate for him, had he survived that day? Does the tumor change the degree to which you consider the killings “his fault”? Couldn’t you just as easily be unlucky enough to develop a tumor and lose control of your behavior?

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be dangerous to conclude that people with a tumor are free of guilt, and that they should be let off the hook for their crimes?

As our understanding of the human brain improves, juries are increasingly challenged with these sorts of questions. When a criminal stands in front of the judge’s bench today, the legal system wants to know whether he is blameworthy. Was it his fault, or his biology’s fault?[/i]

Free will may exist (it may simply be beyond our current science), but one thing seems clear: if free will does exist, it has little room in which to operate. It can at best be a small factor riding on top of vast neural networks shaped by genes and environment. In fact, free will may end up being so small that we eventually think about bad decision-making in the same way we think about any physical process, such as diabetes or lung disease. theatlantic.com/magazine/ar … al/308520/

Nice :slight_smile:

The thing controlling all your decisions will also make that decision.

You can compare humans to robots if you want to. Humans cannot choose what they like, so “their liking” is a programmed yardstick to evaluate choices as a computer uses code that it didn’t write to determine what it will UNFREELY choose. How can it be free when it can only choose one option? The fact that it is not constrained by external force does not mean the choice is free. You really need to understand this because there is no wide range between free and unfree when it comes to man’s will.

I gave this as an example as to how schizophrenic this becomes when scientists use the idea that neuronal impulses are making choices before we consciously make them. The motivation for a choice that may be hidden in the subconscious mind does not remove the conscious mind from the equation because the choice is still up to the agent or the “I” that the brain is contained in. It takes the conscious mind to say “yes” to an action even if there is a gap of 7 seconds where the brain has already made a decision. The agent can veto that decision if within those 7 seconds something changes the mind of the agent where he chooses not to act on that impulse. I don’t know if there ever will be a time that scientists will know exactly what choice you will make before you make it having a 7 second delay. More importantly, it wouldn’t matter what choice was made if the choice hurt no one. What scientists are trying to work on is determining if a person is a high risk, thus the intervention by scientists would be employed to identify those people and quarantine them. But this would be unnecessary if we knew that we could never desire to hurt anyone as a preferable choice under changed conditions of the new world.

Removed -

I’m sorry but my reaction here is the same. From my frame of mind [which might be the problem] you are arguing that 1] I’m not letting you move forward and that 2] I could only choose to not let you move forward.

What this amounts to [to me] is the assumption that if everyone thinks like you [and the arguments made in the book] this will be the future.

Again, as though in chosing not to do this now, which they could never have not not chosen, that’s the problem.

People don’t look at these relationships as you do now because they never could have chosen to look at them that way. Or, had the laws of matter been different, they could never have chosen anything other than to look at them as you do and to share them.

Either way it will only have been as it ever could have been.

As you noted above, someone else will have to figure out a way to explain to me how I could only have chosen to refuse to read what you have written and that you are justified in pointing that as the problem. I’m not arguing that people can’t alter their behaviors, only that in a wholly determined universe it would seem that these new choices are only as they could ever have been.

This part:

If I am not actually free to choose to read those chapters and you are not actually free to point that out to me, then this exchange would seem to be in sync with a wholly determined universe.

I don’t know how to not think of it like that if I was never really free to think about it any other way.

If I have the autonomy to make that choice myself then I am clearly missing your point of view. It makes no sense to me that you would argue that.

Sure, once I freely choose to do something I am never able to not choose to do it. But free-will advocates also embrace that.

I am now just all that much more confused about your point of view.

Yes, we’ve been over this. John makes a choice to set up the dominoes in a determined universe where he was never really free to say “no, I won’t set them up”. The dominoes were going to be set up by John. Period. Why? Because that is wholly in sync with matter [be it dominoes or brains] in sync with immutable laws.

But why would it not be reasonable to argue that in a wholly determined universe the brain merely shifts gears from the dream world to the waking world. The difference being that in the dream world we are oblivious to the brain creating a world while in the waking world we embody the psychological illusion that somehow “mind” [or “soul” for some] function on a level that transcends mere matter. “I” call the shots “for real” when I am awake.

Or maybe not?

Around and around and around…

We “veer” in the only direction that we were ever going to veer. In the only direction that we ever could have veered. But unlike the unconscious dominoes, we “choose” to topple in this new direction.

External constraint, internal constraint. It would seem to be all “at one” with nature unfolding as a matter mechanism.

If will is not free how is responsibility not just an inherent component of that? We think we are more or less responsible but it was never within our capacity to think any other way.

If the knowledge we acquire is knowledge that we are only ever able to acquire, then so too is our sense of responsibility. Then so too is that which we either achieve or do not achieve. It’s all and always in sync with the nature of existence itself.

From my frame of mind [still], you are telling me I need to do something I am either able to freely need to do or was only ever going to need to do…and was then only ever going to either do or not do.

“Compatibilism”

Craig Ross in Philosophy Now magazine

Try as I might I am unable to wrap my head around this. Even as a “theory” it doesn’t make sense to me. If prior events caused me to invent the theory, how can it be argued in turn that I was free to invent it? I was never able to not invent it but I still “willed” it’s invention.

The river is mindless. It chooses nothing. It volunteers nothing. It flows wholly in accordance with the laws of nature. A thing doing only what it must do. Period.

Or “period” to the extent this can be understood given the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about existence itself.

If my will is also wholly in sync with a brain wholly in sync with the laws of nature then my choosing to swim in the river is actually my “choosing” to swim in the river. A psychological concoction that is no less wholly determined.

No one forced me to go into the river but I was still never able to not go into the river.

That’s the part about being “free” that won’t sink in.

But something engenders the conscious mind like an illusion. The conscious mind can’t be its own cause.

“Compatibilism”

Craig Ross in Philosophy Now magazine

Here is [once again] where I get stuck.

If our “passions, motives and desires” do not come out of nowhere but are integral to a brain/mind wholly in sync with the laws of matter, how is what we “will” not just another manifestation of that in turn? Always wholly in sync as well with our “reason [prudence]” to produce choices/behaviors that could only ever have been what they were, are and will be?

Okay, the wasp is at a point in the evolution of life on earth where its brain is not nearly as sophisticated as our own. It is not “self-conscious” in the manner that we are. There are no historical or cultural or experiential memes complicating what is basically instinctual behavior. Biological imperatives propel it from moment to moment.

But how can we pin down definitively whether our own brain has evolved to the point where biological imperatives give way to an “I” actually able to will behaviors freely, autonomously?

To call that a “kind of freedom” is one thing. But it may well be just a complex “psychological freedom” that our brain has somehow come to trick us into believing is the real thing.

“Compatibilism”

Craig Ross in Philosophy Now magazine

This is interesting. Had matter not evolved into life evolving into mammals evolving into self-conscious human beings, it seemingly was inevitable that the Big One would smash into earth precipitating another extinction event for all other life forms.

But instead it did evolve into us and we are matter able to actually attempt to avoid that collision.

And while it seems that sooner or later an asteroid big enough to wipe us out is inevitable there may be strikes that we can prevent.

But how do we wrap our minds around that? Besides, whether we do or do not put a dent in the inevitable part with any particular asteroid, that would not seem to change the fact that, in a wholly determined universe, what does unfold could only ever have unfolded as it did.

Isn’t that inevitable?

Same with heart disease. We may one day all but eliminate it. But only because nature “willed” that to be only as it could be. We just don’t know if there is any measure of teleology “behind” nature itself. God or No God.

How flexible can any response be that can only be the embodiment of inflexible laws of matter.

If these laws are inflexible. And how do we determine that? By choosing freely among alternatives or not?

That is true, and that’s why Daniel Dennett doesn’t think a slap on the wrist would be advantageous because the deterrent would be undermined. That’s what he means when he says: “a free will worth wanting.” That’s where we’re at right now in our development as a species.

dailytexanonline.com/2016/07 … rain-tumor

Once we understand that what we do is not of our own free will, then we cannot separate a person who is not guilty due to a tumor from a person who is guilty because he killed without a tumor. Both are not free.

For those of you who may have recently found this thread, here are the first three chapters. This should give you enough information to know whether you find this knowledge compelling.

[i]http://www.declineandfallofallevil.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Decline-and-Fall-of-All-Evil-2-13-2019-THREE-CHAPTERS.pdf[/i]

“Compatibilism”

Craig Ross in Philosophy Now magazine

This is precisely the sort of speculation I am not able to grapple with effectively. In other words, in a way that allows me to grasp what the compatibilists are telling us about the alleged “freedom” emobodied in fact that while rocks don’t choose to tumble down a mountain in a landslide, human beings do choose to ski down a mountain.

Just as the rocks could not not tumble down the mountain in a landslide, skiers could not not choose to go down the slope.

In either context, different configurations of matter are doing only that which matter obeying immutable laws [if this is the case] could have done.

No other human being coerced you to choose to ski but your “will” to choose is merely another inherent manifestation of nature.

With God the coercion would seem to revolve around that fact that nothing you will ever do is not already known by God. The only question that pops into my mind here is that, in a wholly determined universe, could God Himself have ever not placed you on Earth? Is God in turn inherently capricious? And thus only seemingly capricious in an existence where everything that even He does is only as it ever could have been.

Unless, of course, there is some crucial factor here that I keep missing.

Whether God is inherently capricious or controlled by natural law begins with the assumption that God is a thinking being like humans. Isn’t this called anthropomorphism? In the book, Decline and Fall of All Evil, the author personalized the word God to make the writing less dry, but he clarified that God only means the laws that govern our universe. To speculate beyond that is counter-productive IMO as far as this discussion goes because it’s a distraction.

Indeed, and what could be construed more as “physical coercion” than in being compelled to choose as but one more inherent component of nature’s material/phenomenal laws?

And even if we choose because others coerce us to choose are they not in turn coerced by natural laws to coerce us?

But is not the satisfaction that we feel but one more aspect of what could only ever be?

But you could not have desired otherwise in a wholly determined universe. Or, rather, that’s how I think about it. I could never have not wanted to do the things that I think, feel, say or do.

This part:

Again: In a wholly determined unverse how could they have not been deceived by these words? Like those folks could have freely choosen to grasp the words such that they were not deceived by them.

This part:

Some may construe this as a “clarification” but I’m not one of them. To me, this is but one more “general description” encompassed in a “world of words” defining and defending each other. How does this assessment “work” for all practical purposes when the discussion shifts to actual human interactions in a particular context.

For example, of late the news here in America has been splattered with accounts of Trump’s national emergency aimed at building a wall on the border with Mexico.

Given the assessment above what are the players in this political conflict actually choosing autonomously [freely] to think, feel, say or do.

Is this all unfolding necessarily per nature’s immutable laws or can minds be changed and new policies pursued. Me, I situate human interactions of this sort in my own understanding of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Out in a No God world in which I take my leap to some measure of autonomy.

Over and over again: if you are only able to “choose” to make this point on this thread, then it is but one more necessary component of a real world subsumed in a wholly determined universe. No one posting here, no one following the exchange was ever really free to not do so.

Or, rather, that is still how I have come to understand it “here and now”.

Then…

But if what we do contemplate is only that which we were ever able to contemplate, how are we not but rocks with brains?

Then back again to understanding how [given an understanding of the existence of existence itself] matter evolves into brains evolving in minds evolving into points of view able to dispute whether they were freely concocted.

Yeah, in a determined universe, that’s what I think too. But clearly we are thinking about it differently.

But: how is choosing to extend this knowledge not in turn just another inherent manifestation of nature?

God’s thinking [in however He manages to think] is either autonomous or determined. Just as with those who equate God with the universe [the pantheists]: this intertwining either has some element of volition in it or it doesn’t.

And for those who convince themselves that they are freely choosing to believe in God, He is anything but a distraction.

Again iambiguous, no one is debating that everyone is compelled to do what they do as one more inherent component of nature’s material/phenomenal laws. The problem though is the fact that most lay people believe that having a choice IS free will. They do not consider choice without physical constraint as being unfree.

Yes, that is true. Choice is part of natural law because only one choice is possible (i.e., the choice that offers greater satisfaction) at any given moment in time, which is one more aspect of what could ever be. The significance of this understanding becomes apparent in Chapter Two.

That is true.

True, but again the significance of this becomes clear as it is shown how desire changes (i.e., the desire to strike a first blow of hurt) when the conditions of the environment change — as part of what could ever be.

They couldn’t. No one is saying they could have. That’s why it is being explained in a way that will help them understand these words [in a wholly determined universe].

This was anything but a general description encompassed in a world of words. This is not about defense. He was clarifying that saying “I did something of my own free will” is correct when it means "I did something of my own desire because I wanted to. It does not mean I did something because I was compelled to do it based on previous events that forced me to do it against my will. That is an important point because determinism, as it’s presently defined, implies that we are forced, against our will, to do what we do based on antecedent factors, when NOTHING has the power to make us to anything against our will. We have absolute control over this.

[i] The expression ‘I did it of my own
free will’ has been seriously misunderstood for although it is
impossible to do anything of one’s own free will, HE DOES
EVERYTHING BECAUSE HE WANTS TO since absolutely
nothing can make him do what he doesn’t want to. Think about this
once again. Was it humanly possible to make Gandhi and his
followers do what they did not want to do when unafraid of death
which was judged, according to their circumstances, the lesser of two
evils? In their eyes, death was the better choice if the alternative was
to lose their freedom. Many people are confused over this one point.
Just because no one on this earth can make you do anything against
your will does not mean your will is free. Gandhi wanted freedom for
his people and it was against his will to stop his nonviolent movement
even though he constantly faced the possibility of death, but this
doesn’t mean his will was free; it just means that it gave him greater
satisfaction to face death than to forego his fight for freedom.

Consequently, when any person says he was compelled to do what he
did against his will, that he really didn’t want to but had to because he
was being tortured, he is obviously confused and unconsciously
dishonest with himself and others because he could die before being
forced to do something against his will. What he actually means was
that he didn’t like being tortured because the pain was unbearable so
rather than continue suffering this way he preferred, as the lesser of
two evils, to tell his captors what they wanted to know, but he did this
because he wanted to not because some external force made him do
this against his will. If by talking he would know that someone he
loved would be instantly killed, pain and death might have been judged
the lesser of two evils. This is an extremely crucial point because
though it is true that will is not free, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
ON THIS EARTH CAN MAKE MAN DO ANYTHING
AGAINST HIS WILL. He might not like what he did — but he
wanted to do it because the alternative gave him no free or better
choice. It is extremely important that you clear this up in your mind
before proceeding.[/i]

Volition is something we as humans have, but this does not grant us free will. I hope you’re really listening to what I’m saying because people often half listen just so they can respond with their ideas without ever taking the necessary time to understand the other person’s perspective.

That is true. I am only saying for the purposes of this discussion because oftentimes a discussion gets sidetracked. I didn’t want that to happen.

i haven’t read the book because i don’t believe anything more can be said on the matter. the metaphysical subject of freewill was resolved centuries ago, and since then philosophers have only restated the matter in their own unique way… though none of this was really necessary. a quicker way would be to point those interested toward classic philosophers like hume, spinoza and nietzsche… and more modern philosophers like wittgenstein, chisholm, taylor and frankfurt. of course one can write their own book, and i don’t doubt that it would sell somewhere, but there’s really nothing new to be said in this matter, fortunately or unfortunately (whichever you prefer).

if i may point out here, forms of compatibilism or ‘soft determinism’ usually get their currency from distorting and/or importing into otherwise ordinary terms certain hidden premises which aren’t made explicit. in the above instance, you’re implying that the ‘will’ and the ‘we’ are somehow free from the causal constraints that the body is subject to. this would be to introduce a cartesian substance that is not subject to the same natural processes that the body, in which it exists, is subject to. your version of compatibilism dissolves when you realize that there is no such agency that is causally exempt from the forces that order everything else in nature. once you realize there is no ‘we’ in the sense of there being an ‘I’ that acts upon the body rather than through it - or i should say ‘as it’ -, whether or not a ‘we’ has ‘absolute control’ is a nonsensical question. there are not two separate entities working together here; it’s not the ‘self’ and the self’s ‘body’. it’s not the agency and the thing the agency acts upon. rather there is a single ontological substance, if you will, acting simpliciter.

and yet, we cannot get around the problem of having to decide in praxis. built into this causal chain of events is that peculiar situation involving our neurology… that lapse of time in which manifold processes are not brought to the foreground in consciousness. it’s this peculiar detail in nature that gives rise to the illusion. you all know this already.

but now let’s be clear. even though there is no freewill, we’d be mistaken to use the word ‘determine’ as an alternative. as you’ll see (in the below quote), the meaning of this word in the various ways we’ve learned to use it and make sense out of it, cannot be counted on to describe the process without yielding confusions. we are finally forced to say that things ‘just happen’, and continue living and interacting with people as if we really did have freewill. what then is the function of the lie of freewill? i call it the most recent form of moral subterfuge; it serves no other purpose than as a means for giving praise or placing blame, depending on whether or not we find a person agreeable or not. in this way it is a form of control and/or manipulation. it solicits admiration from those who we favor with praise, and fear/guilt from those who we reprimand with blame. you could even say that the degree with which a person uses these means is proportionate to their power and understanding. the weaker and more confused a person is, the more they rely on these means to understand their valuing of others. one who truly understood the truth (a spinoza, for instance… an almost impossible height) would have nothing but praise for everything, since they recognize the perfect order of nature in its totality; that things must happen as they do and could not happen any other way. this of course does not render one into a passive stoic who resigns into quietism. one still ‘wills’, only they no longer blame, no longer dread, no longer fear. as i said, an almost impossible ‘level’ of wisdom to reach. what spinoza said was ‘as difficult as it was rare.’

Determinism
Mon Feb 18, 2019 1:43 pm

promethean75 wrote:
i haven’t read the book because i don’t believe anything more can be said on the matter.

Just because you believe nothing more can be said on the matter doesn’t make it so. Why sell yourself short?

promethean75 wrote:
… the metaphysical subject of freewill was resolved centuries ago,

No it wasn’t. It has yet to be resolved.

promethean75 wrote:
… and since then philosophers have only restated the matter in their own unique way… though none of this was really necessary. a quicker way would be to point those interested toward classic philosophers like hume, spinoza and nietzsche… and more modern philosophers like wittgenstein, chisholm, taylor and frankfurt. of course one can write their own book, and i don’t doubt that it would sell somewhere, but there’s really nothing new to be said in this matter, fortunately or unfortunately (whichever you prefer).

[i]So you believe these philosophers had the last word on the subject? :confused:

Determinism, as it’s presently defined, implies that we are forced, against our will, to do what we do based on antecedent events, when NOTHING has the power to make us to anything against our will. We have absolute control over this.[/i]

promethean75 wrote:
if i may point out here, forms of compatibilism or ‘soft determinism’ usually get their currency from distorting and/or importing into otherwise ordinary terms certain hidden premises which aren’t made explicit. in the above instance, you’re implying that the ‘will’ and the ‘we’ are somehow free from the causal constraints that the body is subject to.

That’s not what I said. I said most lay people, when they think of free will, believe that’s what they have if there are no external constraints (such as a gun to their head). This is how compatibilists define free will also.

promethean75 wrote:
this would be to introduce a cartesian substance that is not subject to the same natural processes that the body, in which it exists, is subject to. your version of compatibilism dissolves when you realize that there is no such agency that is causally exempt from the forces that order everything else in nature.

Compatibilism doesn’t dissolve because there’s no agency; it dissolves because it’s contradictory. It’s a semantic shift in order to justify the dishing out of just desert. You could not have read what I posted because I never said that we are causally exempt from the forces that order everything in nature. What I did say is that nothing can make us do anything against our will, if we don’t want to do something. Conversely, I said that our choices can only go in one direction, which is WHY will is not free. If it was free, we could choose either/or, but that would make a mockery of contemplation, which is for the sole purpose of deciding which choice, under our particular circumstances, is preferable.

promethean75 wrote:
once you realize there is no ‘we’ in the sense of there being an ‘I’ that acts upon the body rather than through it - or i should say ‘as it’ -, whether or not a ‘we’ has ‘absolute control’ is a nonsensical quest.

It is anything but a nonsensical quest. It is the most important quest of all time because it has the power to prevent from coming back that for which blame and punishment were previously necessary, as part of our development. At this juncture, it is important to clarify what is meant by responsibility. With your reasoning someone could say "I wasn’t responsible for shooting that person because there is no “I”;, ontologically speaking, I’m just part of a causal chain. Nature did what it wanted through me, but not of my own accord. Do you see a problem with this reasoning? Regardless of the reason for my pulling the trigger, the responsibility for making the choice (not the moral responsibility which invokes blame) was mine because nothing has the power to force me to do what I prefer not to do. Can you please sit with this for a moment before telling me I’m wrong? You have no conception at this point why this distinction is important.

promethean75 wrote:
there are not two separate entities working together here; it’s not the ‘self’ and the self’s ‘body’. it’s not the agency and the thing the agency acts upon. rather there is a single ontological substance, if you will, acting simpliciter.

The conventional definition implies that we are puppets on a string where we are forced to do what the software program (or natural law) tells us we must. But this is a false conception because the software program cannot make us do anything we don’t want to do since the agent (the “I”, the self) must give consent before an action takes place. The fact that there’s agency and the thing the agency acts upon does not mean two separate entities exist. It just means that the agent is not a passive recipient to whatever unfolds without any say in the matter. But …(and here it is again) the choice of the agent not to perform an action is also part of our alignment with nature’s law because this is an inherent attribute of man. We have absolute control to say no to an action (nothing can make us do anything against our will; you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink), and no control over what we find preferable since we are compelled to move in the direction of greater satisfaction, and only one choice is possible at any given moment in time.

prometheus75 wrote:
and yet, we cannot get around the problem of having to decide in praxis. built into this causal chain of events is that peculiar situation involving our neurology… that lapse of time in which manifold processes are not brought to the foreground in consciousness. it’s this peculiar detail in nature that gives rise to the illusion. you all know this already.

Even though neuroscience tells us that things are going on below our conscious awareness, the choices we make (even if we’re not sure of all the underlying reasons that we choose something) are done with our conscious awareness. Exceptions could be deep hypnosis where one is being controlled by another person’s suggestion, but even here, I wonder if one would do something egregious and against his moral underpinnings.

prometheus75 wrote:
but now let’s be clear. even though there is no freewill, we’d be mistaken to use the word ‘determine’ as an alternative. as you’ll see (in the below quote), the meaning of this word in the various ways we’ve learned to use it and make sense out of it, cannot be counted on to describe the process without yielding confusions. we are finally forced to say that things ‘just happen’, and continue living and interacting with people as if we really did have freewill. what then is the function of the lie of freewill? i call it the most recent form of moral subterfuge; it serves no other purpose than as a means for giving praise or placing blame, depending on whether or not we find a person agreeable or not.

Very true. Blame and praise are opposite sides of the coin.

prometheus75 wrote:
in this way it is a form of control and/or manipulation. it solicits admiration from those who we favor with praise, and fear/guilt from those who we reprimand with blame. you could even say that the degree with which a person uses these means is proportionate to their power and understanding. the weaker and more confused a person is, the more they rely on these means to understand their valuing of others. one who truly understood the truth (a spinoza, for instance… an almost impossible height) would have nothing but praise for everything, since they recognize the perfect order of nature in its totality; that things must happen as they do and could not happen any other way. this of course does not render one into a passive stoic who resigns into quietism. one still ‘wills’, only they no longer blame, no longer dread, no longer fear. as i said, an almost impossible ‘level’ of wisdom to reach. what spinoza said was ‘as difficult as it was rare.’

[i]Because Spinoza was dissatisfied with theology’s explanation of
good and evil, he opened the door of determinism and looked around
quite a bit but did not know how to slay the fiery dragon (the great
impasse of blame), so he pretended it wasn’t even there. He stated,
“We are men, not God. Evil is really not evil when seen in total
perspective,” and he rejected the principle of an eye for an eye. Will
Durant, not at all satisfied with this aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy,
although he loved him dearly, could not understand how it was
humanly possible to turn the other cheek in this kind of world. He
also went in and looked around very thoroughly and, he too, saw the
fiery dragon but unlike Spinoza he made no pretense of its
non-existence. He just didn’t know how to overcome the beast but
refused to agree with what common sense told him to deny.

The
implications really need no further clarification as to why free will is
in power. Nobody, including Spinoza and other philosophers, ever
discovered what it meant that man’s will is not free because they never
unlocked the second door which leads to my discovery. The belief in
free will was compelled to remain in power until the present time
because no one had conclusive proof that determinism was true, nor
could anyone slay the fiery dragon which seemed like an impossible
feat. Is it any wonder that Johnston didn’t want to get into this
matter any further? Is it any wonder Durant never went beyond the
vestibule? Are you beginning to recognize why it has been so difficult
to get this knowledge thoroughly investigated? [/i]

It is true that confusion arises due to definition only. There can be no meeting of the minds when everyone has a different definition of what determinism and free will mean. Definitions mean nothing where reality is concerned unless they reflect accurately what is going on in reality. For example, we are not denied a will in determinism. Moreover, the knowledge I am presenting is not prescriptive. It does not say we must choose so and so because determinism prescribed that this must be so. It is descriptive ONLY. It is also not anthropomorphic because we’re not attributing man made characteristics to laws of nature; we are part of the laws of nature. I’m not sure if my response will satisfy Rosa’s take on the misuse of words because that is the crux of the problem but not in the way she’s describing. I’m hoping that people will be interested in a more accurate definition of determinism. This correct definition, and the corollary that follows, reconciles determinism with moral responsibility. Will is not denied us, it’s just not a free will. By keeping the will intact, it removes the alienating nature of traditional thought that has confused the free will/determinism debate up until the present day.

Yes, but in a wholly determined universe, these lay people believe only that which they were ever able to believe. That is where we always seem to get stuck. Why? Because we were never able to not get stuck. If everything is “unfree” that would certainly include this exchange.

Again, unless there is another way to think about all this that I keep missing.

This part:

When you speak of greater satisfaction here it is [to me] as one who believes in autonomy thinks of it. I chose this because in weighing what would bring me greater satisfaction, I freely picked that instead of something else. You speak of desires changing as though they change as they do of our own volition. From my frame of mind, however, thinking and feeling are interchangable in a wholly determined universe.

This part:

It is being explained to them in the only way it was ever going to be explained to them. And they react to the explanation in the only way they were ever sble too. It’s not like they were ever free to grasp your explanation if they do not grasp it.

In other words, everything that we think, feel, say and do is inherently intertwined of necessity in the unfolding material universe.

EVERYthing.

But if you could never not want to…?

And if our “will” is but one more of nature’s dominoes toppling over [necessarily] into the choices we make in any particular context…?

And, from my frame of mind, even given some measure of autonomy, the “will” is embedded in the existential contraption that intertwines dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in the is/ought world. A world where value judgments collide all the time.

This makes sense to him, to you. To me though [in a wholly determined universe] it does not.

Either Ghandi’s choices in the world back then might have been other than what they were…and history been changed…or they were always going to be what they were and history unfolded only as it ever could have.

Admittedly, I may well be unable to grasp this point, but like the point above, it makes no sense to me in a wholly determined universe. Either the folks here – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghrai … oner_abuse – were choosing and behaving of their own volition and history may well have been different, or there was never a way in which history here could have unfolded other than the way it did.

What we want to do under torture would seem [to me] to be no less what we could only ever have wanted to do if “I” here is embedded in a wholly determined universe. Just as the one inflicting the torture could not have chosen not to inflict it.

What freaks people out about this is the idea that no one can ever be held morally responsible for something they could never have not done. But they are, in turn, freaked out only because they could never have not been freaked out.

I’m less keen on definitions then on the extent to which any particular definition is brought down to earth. Our consent [regarding anything we think, feel, say, do] is either embedded in some measure of autonomy, volition, free will etc., or it is wholly in sync with a brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

This makes sense to me only to the extent that, in seeking greater satisfaction, I was able to choose not to think as I do. Because in thinking like this it brings me anything but a feeling of being satisfied.

Our brains would appear to be [up to now] matter able to become conscious of itself as matter having evolved over time given the evolution of life on earth. Life somehow having evolved from mindless matter. How then is mindful matter different from mindless matter? That’s always been the gist of it here. Are human brains able to choose differently from those acts of nature that appear to be completely mindless?

Well, we don’t fully grasp that. But, in the interim, dominoes topple over only as they were ever able to and we think, feel, say and do things only as we were/are/will ever be able to.

Here, however, you make a distinction that I am not able to grasp given the assumption that we are in turn necessarily embedded in a wholly determined universe.

But: Could you have ever chosen not to tell me this point? Could I ever reacted to it [over and over again] other than as I did/do/will?

Ultimate control? Or any control at all?

Then…

Rocks don’t think. We do. But, as with the rocks, we are on a trek into the future only as it is ever able to be.

Our capacity to think generates [psychologically] the illusion of freedom. That rocks don’t have this capacity distinguishes them from us. But our brain is no less “choosing” to ski down the mountain than a rock is “choosing” to tumble down it in a landslide.

In a determined universe.

How then are we not “for all practical purposes” the equivalent of nature’s dominoes/puppets? We think ourselves into believing that we are choosing freely to ski down the mountain. But nature knows better.

Thus…

Sorry, but I’m still completely lost here in regard to what you are trying to convey. Either you are free to make another attempt to explain it, and I am free to get it this time, or “whatever choice [either of us selects]…is what could never not have been made”.

volition: the faculty or power of using one’s will.

So, is that “faculty and power” autonomous or not?

And, as for “really listening” to what you’re saying, there are some folks who tell you this, but what they mean is, “if you were really listening to me, you would agree with me.”

yeeeeah, i dunno about all that. i think rather that because whoever wrote that was personally terrified of the consequences morality was exposed to by the truth of determinism, that they thought spinoza came to the conclusion of determinism because he wanted to free us from blame, rather than vice-versa. spinoza did not set out to prove determinism because he found blame unsettling. rather he came logically to the conslusion of determinism and then noticed that this conclusion removes blame.

in a way spinoza stands frozen before this great epihany just like biggy does… who keeps pressing the point that you’re not going to squeeze in there any ‘free volition’, no matter how sophisticated your argument appears.

now whether or not you know it, you (peacegirl) are on to something extraordinary… something that is a precursor to a major shift in world politics. we agreed elsewhere (indirectly and across forums) that the abolishment of the freewill illusion in fact makes man more responsible in that he has to take responsibility for his environment as an externalist; someone who recognizes more clearly than ever before in history, that people are entirely conditioned by their environments. this kind of concession would radically change the basis of positive law, especially, because in dismissing mental states and processes as irrelevant - as behaviorism rightly does - it places focus on the operant conditioning that contributes to criminal behavior. this would literally be like a renaissance in the social sciences and would change everything.

but this step is centuries down the road. today the courts are still arguing such nonsense as ‘yeah but he knew what he did was wrong.’ but what do they mean ‘wrong’? ‘illegal’, or ‘wrong’ in an imperative sense? the world today still believes in morality because it believes in freewill, and it believes in freewill because of philosophy. as long as these illusions still exist, those in power will make no effort to accept responsibility for controlling environments and instead continue to exploit the opportunity to make a business out of the criminal justice system.

i may have said too much or not enough here, i’m not sure. but you can get a feel for what i’m implying with something along the lines of what lenin said: capitalism deserves every bit of the crime it gets. what he means is that the excessive nature of the freedoms in a capitalist/consumerism, coupled with that nonsensical doctrine of freewill, produces an environment in which those who do not take responsibility for controlling such excessive freedoms, end up turning around and blaming the criminals that result from their negligence to do so. but the sinister genius of capitalism turns even this into an advantage. it produces its criminals and then makes a business out of its criminal justice systems. it creates a problem it can then make money off of; a strong market for the state and privately owned prison systems. reason #254 why capitalism is a joke.