At this point, the Determinists are Determined and have their heels dug into the ground, Sil and Prom. If you two won’t listen to Reason, and the arguments become circular, unwilling to listen and respond to the main points, then no progress will be made. But I will repeat myself anyway. Now it’s more valid than ever to consider the reasons and causes why most people are “Determined”, and have no Free-Will, while some people are Undetermined, and do have Free-Will. Is it a mere matter of belief, is it subjective? If you believe you are free, then you are free, and if not, then not? A criminal is in a jail cell. Does him believing he is free, make himself free? No, of course not. So the physical attribute of Free or Not, is obvious. But there is a mental aspect. What does believing you are free actually do for a person?
And is there something to being physically free and mentally free? What does it mean to realize all aspects of freedom, to move and think freely?
To restart some of the core arguments, and Prom mentioned before, most of humanity has deep investments in their beliefs and values. This includes Freedom or Not, Slavery and Determinism. If a family has been Christian for 1000 years, and they’ve been wrong the entire time, are they going to simply give-up on God? Or, even when the evidence mounts, and they are wrong to the very core, they will still hold onto the error and blind themselves to their indictments? They won’t turnover and admit defeat. They dig deeper into their position.
What must it had been like when Geocentricism was overturned by Heliocentricism, and the world had to be convinced they were wrong about such a simple fact? Did humanity merely “give it up”, or didn’t they fight for it? And how was this fight waged, except in the education/Indoctrination of children, for generations?
Because mass-beliefs have to be engineered in such a fashion. You don’t change the minds of all humanity overnight. You indoctrinate their children, who indoctrinate their children, who indoctrinate their children, etc. until Geocentricism switches-over to Heliocentricism, or the Abrahamic Christian-Jew-Moslem Nil God, is turned-over to the Pagan Gods. It takes multiple generations, centuries or millenniums, not an overnight process.
So I don’t suspect the one who is mentally enthralled, Slave-Dialectic, to just turn-over and admit to the possibility of Free-Will either.
Here’s the Crux though. You can change the disposition of the human masses over lifetimes and generations, but does that further the Understanding? Does humanity then comprehend the reasons and causes that they now believe Heliocentricism and not Geocentricism? No, instead, they merely do as they are told. They are followers of ideas and thoughts, of Reason, and not leaders of it. Thus they are not free and not part of the Master-Dialectic. Because to understand the reasons and causes, would necessitate that most people understand the changing of Paradigms, or the Conversion of this or that god, to the other. And it is not a fast process, nor overnight, but the domination of one Culture over another.
Thus even if USA builds a “Truly Free Society”, people repeat mantras that “we are free”, but don’t necessarily understand why or how. And that is the “Determinist” position as I see it here, and I believe it’s been presented thus far. They can argue “we are not free” to the same degree, without any progress. But the hang-ups and barriers are becoming visible, which I thank Sil for his courage to admit his ignorance. It is both enlightening and comedic. “Absence of evidence is evidence of Absence”, blah blah blah. Freedom is not an apparent condition, ever. How could anybody know they are free, when they may or may not be? I asked this question early-on, never got sufficient answers.
If you believed yourself free, and you actually were free “objectively”, then there maybe no way to “Determine” it, thus being Indeterminable but a probability nevertheless. No Authority above to Dictate or indoctrinate, whether you are free or not. No directions, no instructions, no conditions, aren’t these the prerequisite to Freedom anyway? Can a person be ‘above’ the rules of humanity, of the Abrahamic Nil God? Outside the boundaries of Causality? To ‘Cause’ events and actions, but in-turn not be “caused” by them. To impose will upon others, but others do not impose will upon you??
Isn’t this the meaning of Power, that you can do what you want to others, or existence, but it cannot do the same to you? If you answer yes then my arguments are at the very least reasonable, as I’ve laid everything out from start-to-finish, multiple times.
And if you agree power, then you will be forced to admit Moral Agency. If Freedom is possible, then you have to begin taking responsibility and accountability for it all, and for everything.
Because people do Cause things to be, especially, harm against each-other. This much is obvious, common sense. Sil, you can keep avoiding these points all you want. You have already, but this is why you’re now cycling backward to your logical fallacies and errors of judgment. Mental blind-spot.