They are usually not now and not since modern philosophy ceased to understand it as such. The dialectical materialists did as such. But traditionally they were mutually exclusive,
So, Dennett is a tradionalist?
I wonder about the motives of people who want us to think we are nothing special.
we could never empirically prove freewill or determinism because we cannot experience causality (see hume), but we can arrive at either conclusion through the use of reason alone… such that each thesis would be known, if its known, a priori. but when you examine the lines of reason followed in each theory, you quickly find significant problems with the theory of freewill, and not so much with determinism.
what might be making the matter difficult for you (if it really is and you’re not being ironic) is the stuff written by those who are trying to defend freewill… and you aren’t able to spot the how the arguments are either incorrect or just plain nonsense. a good example would be what you’re reading over at KT written by satyr. this obscure notion that because all is in ‘flux’, and/or there is some degree of ‘randomness’ in events - and this is only perceptual condition, not a logical problem… that things happen which we don’t ‘expect’ and can’t ascribe causes to - such that the experiencer becomes… what did he say… ‘an actual participant in causality’ or something.
there is no substance in any of this kind of talk. what you’re seeing is the resolve to defend the theory of freewill because believing in freewill is needed in order for him to justify to himself a great deal of his distress and anger toward various things and people. he needs to find ‘fault’ in something, or else he can’t argue it’s ‘wrong’. but i don’t want to make this a lecture in psychology.
getting back to the problem with freewill. you can reduce the theoretical problem to consequences resulting from a distinction made between immanent causality and transuent causality, and what that means, metaphysically. as sil and i had said in so many words months ago, in order for freewill to exist, there has to be an ontologically dualistic system of properties that cannot affect each other, but correspond nonetheless. so supposing immanent causation (‘agent’ causation) is correct, you now have the problem of explaining how these two properties interact.
moreover - and this is a different kind of problem - you’d have to explain what compels this second property to choose what and how it does. let’s grant that immanent causation exists for a moment. wouldn’t there also be an order to this process? what i mean is, say the world consists of these two properties; substance and mind (as descartes had it). substance exists and behaves according to its natural laws and causes, and mind exists and behaves according to its natural laws and causes. now even though substance cannot cause the mind to be or do a certain thing, the mind must still be ordered by some kind of causality.
spinoza’s neutral monism is the best attempt to fix this cartesian problem that i’ve seen. he proposes the obvious; if ideas of the mind are always about things in the world, the order and connection of ideas must be the same as the order and connection of ideas. this is also reflected in wittgenstein’s claim that logic reflects the structure and form of the world, as well as in some of kant’s categories of reason. these dudes are basically saying that even if causation has no connection with ‘mind’, there is still an ordering of reason and nothing can be truly spontaneous or random.
from this ordering we can make the inference that neither mind nor matter is indeterminate. we may not be able to catch causality in the act, but we can logically deduce that it must exist. and even if we maintain the cartesian dualism - that there are two ontologically distinct substance existing together - we’d still not be able to say the freewill was an act of freewill, if you follow me.
nothing that exists is unconditioned and isolated from the forces around it, and so it’s activity cannot be truly spontaneous… nothing can pull itself up by its own boot-straps and set itself in motion. even reba knows this.
Free Will is something we find when we detach, let go, perceive something of the more luminous waters ferried far away from truth. Truth is ugly. Truth is just what’s possible. But that’s wrong. Mind Power is what’s possible. When we retreat from known activities, and call up the alien vortices of the spectacular, that’s when worlds reveal a journey with a rich and supreme route to the random “booster pack” of infinite prizes and adventures everywhere.
Maybe what we are witnessing is not the licence to turn aphorism into a philosophical sense, but opposite , to turn such sense from it’s absurd indications into the lyrically expressed absurdity of.it all.
Might as well distribute leaflets in all university philosophy departments to get rid of.philosophy altogether , as a course of.study.
Merely study Zizek as a.viable source.
Another assessment that is basically reduced down to a world of words that define and defend another bunch of words. In other words, just like mine. My point is always that none of us here seem to possess the wherewithal – the scientific background say – to actually demonstrate [empirically, experimentally, phenomenologically] that what we believe is true about determinism is in fact true. And, in that respect, you and I and Satyr are interchangeable.
And this in my view is basically what makes the matter difficult for all of us.
Sure, maybe. And, sure, maybe not. But the reason many folks become vexed with me is that I suggest their own frame of mind is perhaps more in sync with “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” then they are willing to acknowledge. It is the being certain that matters to them more so than whatever it is they feel certain about. Either in the is/ought world, or out on the metaphysical limb regarding questions like this.
With some philosophers, it is all about what they think they can lasso, and then hogtie, and then pin to the ground…with language itself. Wisdom corralled scholastically [even pedantically] and then put on display here in one or another “general description” that, when situated out in the world of actual human interactions, quickly becomes entangled in all of the countless variables that ceaselessly come at us from all directions.
Unless of course I’m wrong. 
Here, see what I mean?
This part:
With some philosophers, it is all about what they think they can lasso, and then hogtie, and then pin to the ground…with language itself. Wisdom corralled scholastically [even pedantically] and then put on display here in one or another “general description” that, when situated out in the world of actual human interactions, quickly becomes entangled in all of the countless variables that ceaselessly come at us from all directions.
What particular truth, in what particular context? And how would we go about determining if this truth [like our individual perceptions of it] reflects our capacity to freely grasp it [and defend it] or is only subsumed [like everything else] in the laws of nature unfolding only as they ever do, can, must?
what i’m trying to tell ya is that even if determinism is false, the alternative, what we call ‘freewill’, isn’t ‘free’ either. and being that there is no third alternative here to consider, we have to concede some kind of determinism.
even if mind were free from physical causation, it’s contents, its subject, is structured and ordered in the same way physical things in the world are… so that this ordering reflects and gives rise to the mental qualia we call ‘thoughts’ (inaudible language).
for a mental event such as this to be truly free, it would have to arise without having as its subject matter an idea which is of something in the world. but if this is the case, the mental event has no content. it is about nothing. see how that works?
and what i’m saying is nothing original, either. i’m explaining in a different way what spinoza has already said… which was essentially the end of the debate.
don’t you dare insult yourself an satyr like that!
wuddint difficult for me. easy peasy, man. much easier than rocket science (thank goodness. i have trouble launching my own browser… much less a rocket)
that’s because as moralists their heads are filled with spooks. they aren’t only concerned with what is effective, advantageous, beneficial and useful, but also with what is ‘right’. this is a struggle i don’t contend with, fortunately, so i can’t relate to such difficulty.
With all of the causes, triggers, mechanisms, and random portals that open up everywhere on the battlefield, it must appear to be frenzied, seeing how far wide sweeping and overdriving the potentialities become. And language gives us the blueprint for laying down the battle plans for ideas, to take shape, skyrocket, reinvent, and radically redefine reality.
The truth is in the observable terrain that we live in, the so called empirical view of open endedness everywhere. But I dare say that looking too much for observation for the answers may neglect the powers of our introspection to find more of this Free Will. Spinoza thought that Reason is the rule, that by being determined into action by a knowledge of our virtues, the effects, and with Reason determining us into action rather than external stimuli, that we become more free, that we are a self willed cause, and closer to the Ultimate Free Will that is God’s Free Will.
I developed a little box before about these Spinozist “Virtues”. Here they are:
Okay, but what I always aim to do is to reconfigure intellectual contraptions of this sort into more specific descriptions of the actual choices that we make. Here it’s me typing these words and you reading them. How would your point above be applicable to this?
And [of course] in regard to human interactions in the is/ought world, even assuming some measure of free will, “I” [to me] is always constrained [shaped and molded] by the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Or what I call “existential contraptions” in regard to particular aspects of particular sets of circumstances.
Nope. Cite an example of now “for all practical purposes” this is applicable to a choice/“choice” that you made today.
I’m sorry but in regard to the point I raised above, we all are. Just as when the Godfather’s opine about “birth, school, work, death” they are including all of us in turn. No getting around the things that “the human all too human condition” dump on all of us. If only from the cradle to the grave.
On the other hand, if my own thinking about determinism “here and now” comes closer to what is actually true, it’s not like they could ever have done otherwise.
I ask for this:
And you give me yet another one of these:
Of course, in my view, this is where you are most comfortable: up in the clouds of abstraction.
Again: you are reading these words.
How would you reconfigure your own [and Spinoza’s] “general description” analysis above into an actual empirical demonstration that you are reading them of your own free will rather than being compelled by the laws of nature to think, feel, say and do only that which your brain [as matter] is in turn compelled to sustain from day to day.
You know, like in your dreams.
oh i can’t do that. you’re shit out of luck in that respect. a brief metaphysical argument against the existence of freewill neither changes the experience of choice or the choice itself, and it sure as shit doesn’t provide any guidance or advice. that’s a subject for ethics, not metaphysics. all this does is state for the record that there is no freewill. philosophers do different things with that fact, but whatever they do, they still experience every choice as if it were free… and everything that comes with that, i.e., culpability, responsibility, what have you.
Matter transforms into energy, and we are evanescent, outstanding, beautiful creatures, of marvelous construction and design.
There’s something out there called “dark matter-energy”. We can feel its presence, but it can’t be directly penetrated. Who’s to say that there really isn’t a God consciousness system floating over our heads that can point and direct us to make miracles happen?
As logical and scientific you get about the forces moving us around, a small act of courage can move mountains.
You know, like when I was dreaming I could fly in Fairytopia.
i think biggs is asking for an example in real life, not a video game.
unless, of course, i’m wrong.
Okay, that works for you. It doesn’t work for me. Human interactions unfolded on planet earth long before philosophers came along. And they are still unfolding apace long after. And while some philosophers might think it advisable to break the discipline down into such components as logic and epistemology and philology and ethics and metaphysics, etc., it doesn’t change the fact that one way or another everything gets intertwined in the actual choices that we make in interacting with others from day to day.
So, my kind of philosopher never forgets that. And, however clearly futile that is given the yawning gap between “I” and “all there is” , he or she at least makes the attempt to somehow intertwine the essential and the existential.
This thread merely offers speculations regarding whether or not these attempts themselves “are beyond our control”. Naturally as it were.
I ask for this:
And you give me yet [b][u]another[/b][/u] one of these!
We’re stuck: youtu.be/qYe8cGy9TeI
And yet I can only speculate that in a determined universe [as I understand it] that’s only natural.
Wrong, hell! That’s exactly what I’m asking him for!!
fine. ET, i’ll handle this.
jasmine bunny feathers architectural spin vectors transform lugia in dimensional subterfuge. skyrocket rainbows trust in lemon alleyways of melding mind love.
You were 21.8% determined to say that.
that’s because 78.2% of me is a master who can jump real high and not a slave who can’t.