Before, during or after something happens. Before, during or after anything happens. What parts here [including human interactions] are not embedded in matter unfolding only as it ever could have in a wholly determined universe?
What can we know about something, about anything in a wholly ordered universe that we were ever free not to know? or free to know in a different way?
We have choices but once a choice is made it could not have been otherwise.
Well, we make choices and then once that happens, we can’t go back and unmake them. That part is certainly the case.
Hitler chose the Final Solution. That is a historical fact. But was this choice a historical fact only because he could never have not chosen it? That of course is what is at stake here. If everything the human brain as mindful matter chooses is always in sync necessarily with the laws of matter, then when folks blame Hitler for acting in an atrociously immoral manner, that too is just an inherent manifestation of a wholly determined universe.
And when some imagine that as having appalling implications for human interactions that too is just more dominoes toppling over as nature marches on.
That does not mean we are in a fixed state where our choices are not our own, or that the choice has already been made for us using the domino example. This is an important observation because our consent has to precede any choice made.
Our consent. Our choice. And, yes, those autonomous aliens note that most of us are convinced that we are giving our consent to the choices we make.
But who perhaps is fooling themselves here about the nature of that consent, those choices? The “compatibilists” with their “psychological freedom” embedded in an ontologically determined world? Those like peacegirl who seem obsessed that no others force us to choose what nature compels us to choose? Like in not forcing us to choose others have freely chosen to do that!
Or, yes, yes, yes, it’s me here. I’m just not getting what is crystal clear to others about the existential relationship between determinism, the human brain, the human mind and the choices it makes.