Determinism

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

This is particularly difficult for me to wrap my head around. If, in my brain, “random” chemical and neurological interactions occurred spontaneously what exactly would bring this about? Would it just happen “out of the blue”? Somehow connected or not connected at all to those processes that are in sync with the laws of matter.

I mean, how disturbing would that be? I think, feel, say and do things for reasons that can both be explained and not explained? If we have no control over these random “firings” in our brain, then we would have to figure out a way to connect the dots between them and, say, moral responsibility.

In other words, which might be worse, doing things only because we could not not do them, or doing things because our brain just stochastically sets what we do into motion

And, in fact, when you look at the interaction of matter, it’s not for nothing that you don’t often encounter things happening that would seem to suggest this sort of randomness. It’s just that with self-conscious mindful matter, we encounter behaviors strange enough to suspect it. Here though people might be doing something that seems absolutely unintelligible to us…but that is only because we don’t understand the context or are not privy to their motive. Or maybe the laws of matter manifest themselves in any number of diseases that can afflict the brain.

It’s just that even those behaviors that seem to reflect “choices and actions…determined in accordance with our beliefs and desires”, may not actually be determined that way at all. Also, there are brain afflictions like Stereotypic Movement Disorder that can in fact cause someone to bang their head against the wall. Repeatedly.

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

And here we go again: compatibilism

Once more I will make the attempt to grasp how this is actually possible given my own assumption that the human brain is in fact [if it is a fact] just the latest in the evolution of matter wholly in sync with its own physical laws.

Any exceptions would have to be explained in such a way that the attempt to explain in and of itself is not [somehow] in sync with these laws.

Right, like what the compatibilists believe is an exception to the material laws of nature.

Uh, exactly?

From my frame of mind [compelled or not] there appears to be no argument that the compatibilists can propose that makes this go away. Only the psychological illusion that their argument regarding “guidance of our actions” and “correction of our selves” produces this “voluntary involuntary” compatibility.

That’s what still makes sense to me too. Otherwise you are attributing to “I” – re the past, present and future – some “extra” quality that accounts for both the laws of matter and volition. Which many link to one or another God.

And it may be there. But, if so, link me to the scientific and/or philosophical and/or spiritual argument that explains it. Along with an actual demonstration of why all rational men and women are obligated to accept it. In part voluntarily and in part involuntarily.

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

I think on the most visceral level this encompasses much of the skepticism that many have in regard to hard determinism.

Consider…

Up to a point the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon Rainforest can result in a tornado in Oklahoma seems vaguely reasonable. For one thing neither the butterfly nor the tornado are conscious of the actual physical laws of nature that would make something like this possible. But in fact these laws do exist and the butterfly and the tornado are just along for the ride.

This is often referred to as “choas theory”…but in fact it is really anything but. In fact, quite the opposite. Nothing is random here. It is all wholly in sync with the only possible reality there could be.

But then consider further this chain of events: Something brings into existence the universe, nature, reality…existence itself. And its immutable laws. And, as a result of that, I have no choice but to shoot my next door neighbor dead.

And yet given determinism as some claim it to be, both events would seem to be interchangable. In other words, they [and, for that matter, everything else] happen solely because there is no way in which they could not have happened.

Yep, that’s certainly one way to look at it. On the other hand, that’s not the only way to define determinism. Thus…

Actually, what I want to know is this: Is there a way in which to determine if what I want to know is in fact something that I could freely have chosen not to want to know instead?

Our brains allow us to ponder that but our brains are also embedded smack dab in the middle of what we are attempting to understand. How can we possibly get around that?

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

Whatever the computer predicts that you will do and whatever you “choose” to do instead – either in sync with or contrary to what the computer predicts – who cares? It all either unfolds only as it ever could have or you actually are able to choose of your own volition to defy the computer’s prediction. And, as well, we are either able to conclude which of our own volition or we are not.

That’s why “thought experiments” of this sort seem moot if they are in turn ever and always included in a brain thinking them up that is ever and always subsumed in the laws of matter unfolding immutably.

Then more words that are ensnared in all that we do not know about these relationships:

All of this conjecture is basically over my head. What exactly is he suggesting here about determinism as it relates to the computer, to the computer programmer, and to you or I either raising or not raising our hand.

Freely.

Either there is an argument – a demonstrable argument – able to establish human volition here or there is not. Otherwise [to me] it’s just more words defining and defending more words still without the capacity to reconfigure the thought experiment itself something altogether new and different. Something that truly astonishes us about this age-old debate: Wow! I never thought of that!

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

On the other hand, an advocate of the consequence argument may be entirely compelled by the laws of nature to pounce on his words.

Then around and around everyone goes. Embedded – inherently? – smack dab in the middle of that ubiquitous gap between what we think we know about all of this and the fact that “we don’t have a broad or clear enough view of the chains of causes that bring that future about.”

Can’t have?

But what recourse is there but to presume “I” does have at least some capacity not to be necessarily entangled in all the variables there are when nature subsumes nurture in a particular set of circumstances and we ponder why we choose this instead of that.

Here we know that Scrooge lives in a wholly determined world because he is just a character invented by Dickens. Nothing he thinks, feels, says or does is not entirely dependent on the choices that Dickens makes. Instead, it’s Dickens writing the novel and you and I reading it that prompts the sort of reactions we encounter on threads like this one.

Okay, fine, that reply sounds better than it is. As though anyone else has come up with a reply so superior that all others must be measured against it. It’s not in acknowledging the limited scope our ability here, but in acknowledging the extent to which we really have no definitive idea of what an unlimited scope might possibly be.

But then I reprimand myself here by pointing out that all the author is attempting is a conjecture that clearly seems to be more educated, more sophisticated than others.

In other words, I recognize that what angers me the most is in having to accept that I will almost certainly go to the grave as ultimately ignorant then as when I first became fascinated with the question itself.

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

Again, to particular physicists, it may be perfectly rational to argue that, at any one moment in time, matter throughout the universe is not wholly sync given the parameters of what is thought to be the laws of matter.

But how on earth would they actually go about demonstrating that. You may age a tiny bit less when you get off the plane than those waiting for you at the airport but how is it then demonstrated that this in and of itself is not only as it could ever have been given a determined universe?

And, with self-conscious matter, embodied in any particular mind in any particular context, perceptions of time can be radically different. If you are in agony, each minute can seem like an hour. If you are awash in pleasure the hour may seem to just fly by. But the hour itself still encompasses 60 minutes. An entirely human construct that our species was free to concoct or was not.

So what? Either the local universe or that part of the universe millions of light years away are in tandem with the laws of matter or the laws of matter are discovered – autonomously – to be different depending on where you happen to be here and now in the universe. Very little of what happens in some remote village in the Amazon rainforest effects what happens to people in Baltimore. But the same laws of nature would seem to be applicable to all of us.

Instead, what changes are the “rules of behavior”. How does that factor into “the human condition”?

Same thing. Either all of our brains are in tandem with the only way that brains can function given the only way that brain matter can interact, or there is some component of “I” – God? the soul? will? – that makes human consciousness unlike any other matter that we now know of.

Or, rather, that I know of.

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

And isn’t this the number one reason why most of us will scoff at the very idea that is actually possible? Going back to this:

“A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion kelvin and the density of matter in the universe was comparable to the current density of Earth’s atmosphere, neutrons combined with protons to form the universe’s deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.”

That here I am typing these words and here you are reading them derived wholly from this?!

There is no way I am even remotely able to wrap my own “I” around it. There’s just got to be more. From a God, the God to one or another account of pantheism. Buddhism perhaps? Mindless matter evolving into mindful matter evolving into self conscious mindful matter is the whole ball of wax. Either we come to understand this or we just go to the grave like all those billions before us taking our own, by comparison, puny leap to that which works for us in our head.

Or, rather, my own puny leap. I don’t have the capacity to “think” myself into the sort of intellectual leap that there folks are: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195793

Can hard determinism account for a thread such as this too?

Yep, that’s what it asks us to believe alright. On the other hand, my point is always to focus instead on what appears to me to be that enormous gap between what any of us think we know about all this and all that would need to be known about existence itself to make that anything less than a stab – a stumble – in the dark.

In a strange way, however, one can take comfort in that. I’m just not entirely sure why.

Ambiguous said,

“It asks us to believe that if time could be rolled back even to one second after the Big Bang, then history would unfold in exactly the same way, and all these events would occur again without the slightest variation. There can be no wiggle room in the iron block universe as it rolls forward. This is a lot to ask us to believe, and is far too speculative to be taken on faith. As far as we now know, it is just as likely that the past and present could have turned out differently than they did, and that the future that lies before” us is alterable in important respects.

That’s just t point of regress, at that cosmic scale the most convincing argument is that the difference has become totally imperceptible , even by god.

Another big bang would have to occur for that god to realize the ability to refresh an absolutely enlightened creation, where Adam and Eve could not care one way or another.

That is, if multiple big bangs are conceivable.

The more likely scenario is an ever fed back. moebius curvature

That type of representation may help to reinforce a more faithful. speculation.

“People have inferred that time began then, but there really wasn’t any reason for that inference,” said Neil Turok, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, “What we are proposing is very radical. It’s saying there was time before the big bang.”

Under his theory, published today in the journal Science with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University in New Jersey, the universe must be at least a trillion years old with many big bangs happening before our own. With each bang, the theory predicts that matter keeps on expanding and dissipating into infinite space before another horrendous blast of radiation and matter replenishes it. “I think it is much more likely to be far older than a trillion years though,” said Prof Turok. “There doesn’t have to be a beginning of time. According to our theory, the universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large.”

Or:

"The möbius strip with one twist and pinched in the middle looks like the symbol for infinity. Some believe that our universe is actualized as a möbius strip with a finite number of twists of the vibrating strings in space. It is finite in that by going forward it transverses time and space, turning in a warped circle as it experiences its own starting point. It recurs over and over again, perhaps eternally.

The universe came from nothing; the nothing that formed the being and existence of the universe is the Infinite. That this has to be so is inescapable. People have long argued about first causes, but nothingness had to come into existence. There is no other logical answer. Infinity is needed to have the Finite. A solitary, non-dual Infinity precedes the yin and yang of existence itself.

The nothing that is beyond the boundary of our universe is Infinity. It both exits and does not exist simultaneously. It has never been actualized because it has no dimension. Nothingness has everything to do with being and existence because everything is made manifest through nothingness. Nothingness is not temporal. It is non-dimensional. The closest we can get to it is to know that it is not a thing at all, but ‘NoThing’.

Nothing actually does exist and it has always been that way.

The duality of being disappears in the infinity of nothingness. When we realize that nothing really exists, this is not the height of nihilistic thought, but a universal condition that implores understanding. The sentence itself implies that nothing does exist, but that nothing is neither material nor spacial nor a part of time. This discovery does not negate the chemical composition of matter in our actual world, but helps to further refine its essence. That nothing exists does not mean that the world is an illusion or organic chemistry cannot help us lead better lives. It means that the world developed from nothing and exists despite its ghostly origin. No matter how you try to rationalize it away, the world had to come from nothing at all because that is the supreme and only reality. Within time, space is filled with virtual energy, not nothingness. We can even tap this source for power and we will probably draw most of our power usage from that source in the future."

Now which one?

The Free Will of Ebenezer Scrooge
Richard Kamber considers the possibility of changing destiny.

Why does this seem to make sense to so many others?

Consider:

If the words that I am now typing reflect something that I made happen because all of what I make happen is wholly in sync with the laws of matter, how is not why I chose to make it happen not in turn merely another manifestation of determinism? What on earth does it mean to speak of values as the embodiment of aspirations precipitating the act of typing these words “intentionally and deliberately” really encompass if I was never able to not type them?

Again, to me this is basically just an intellectual contraption…unless and until neuroscientists and those who study the human brain can demonstrate that part whereby in choosing to type these words a chemical and neurological sequence unfolds in my brain such that they are able to note how I might have chosen not to type these words at all; or was freely able to type different words instead.

May be? Will be? May not be? Will not be? Is this something that has finally been pinned down once and for all? Okay, link me to the best argument backed up by the best evidence. While providing me with your own argument backed up by ample evidence able to demonstrate that somehow the act of doing so in a determined universe is separate and distinct from why you chose to act as you did and did not choose another behavior instead.

Perhaps? Yeah, that works for me.

“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website

There has to be, right? But: What we don’t know is whether or not this is ever and only because the controversy itself is but another manifestation of incompatibilism. A “discussion” between those who were never able to “opine” other than as nature compels any and all brains to function. The “conflict” itself being just another aspect of the one and the only possible reality.

Thus:

Anyone here able to grasp in its entirety the genetic/memetic parameters of “I” such that this confusion gives way to that elusive metaphysical understanding of “I” embedded in the understanding of existence itself? If the framer himself is ever and always included in the frame that encompasses his existence…?

Including of course this particular effort:

What I still want to know though is this…

If compatibilism is the most reasonable option on the table, how do those here who believe this actually account for the behaviors that they choose from day to day?

Were they able to have chosen different behaviors? Could/would the consequences of those behaviors have been otherwise?

More specifically: Tonight Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Given that compatibilism best explains human interactions, how would one describe this event before, during and after it happens. How is your own reaction accounted for given a belief in compatibilism?

The sun let the bad man see things and he used this sun light to see a man then he shot him and took his money.

Therefor the sun is partially responsible for murder.

This is an example of an error in sequencial assignments.

I believe Faust tried to prove my example,
but he did it in a very different way than me.

A mechanistic universe doesn’t only equate to linear causation.

Also us being locked in very short amounts of [life]time, considering the millions of years things have been happening,
castrates the perspectives on what is really going on.

iambiguous probably sees the potential for disagreement, and applies that to the idea that things can’t be known.
Facts were abstracted to the point of no return.
It’s like jumping down a wide hole,
instead of just looking down the hole at a safe distance.

Well, let’s just say that with any luck, you were never able to not post this and I was never able to not read it.

Otherwise, I might actually possess the freedom to make sense of it.

You know, given a particular context.

So, you are willing to talk to me?

I wrote in my own writings, that good birth is based on luck. We don’t control who we are born as. We don’t say : “I want to be human.”
Also i agree with muslim explanation of divine destiny.
If you are rich, don’t get egotistical about it and loose humility. It didn’t happen because of you.
if you are poor, try not to feel dispare, you didn’t do something wrong and are not being punished.
I was lucky in some ways.
The next step after luck, is realizing nobility.
Lucky beings should share their excess. They will have an excess.
They share it to invest in the world.
Nobility is the step needed before human augmentation will end well.
Without nobility, technology destroys itself.

So, first luck, then nobility, then transcendence.

Also we should not hate sinners, for they are unlucky.
And being ill is a kind of punishment/hell on its own.

More to the point [on this thread]: do I really have a choice?

And, if I do, then, in regard to this…

…I would ask you to demonstrate why/how all rational men and women are obligated to think the same.

Then in regard to a particular context — the Trump campaign rally noted above? — I would ask you to explore the extent to which our individual reactions are rooted in dasein or in the most optimal assessment that serious philosophers are able to provide.

How, in your autonomous view, is luck, nobility and transcendence applicable to the Trump rally?

They are not obligated to think the same.
However, the truth is always true. And some truths are very obvious, too.
So in that way, a large percent of a group can potentially agree on certain things.

Trump is a part of a failing system.
He was lucky enough to get rich, but then he skipped in part the nobility part, so he doesn’t want to improve the basis of humanity : future genetic engineering.
It only works when it is in the right hands.

His hands are pretty well tied, he has only been hired for comic effect, to the hope less chagrin of most everybody else.

So compatibility has never connected the dots.

But in retrospect everything changes and comatibality can reverse the truth-in truth, by simply exchanging the necessary into the contingent possibility: thereby reversing the naturalistic fallacy

When I think about free will, I can only see cause and effect. If I don’t think about free will, I can only see choices to be made.

Everything changes under the microscope, when examined.

So, for me, it’s both. When I ask myself how this could be, my only answer is God. God handles how.

So, in a world where human autonomy is presumed to exist, all you have to do is to insist that what you note above is true. Why? Because it is “the truth”. Obviously?

That demonstrating Trump held a rally in Tulsa last night is interchangeable with demonstrating that the points raised in the speech are just another example of the truth always being true?

Again, assuming human autonomy, who gets to decide what success and failure are with regard to human social, political and economic interactions? Who gets decide when the truth is always true when those interactions result in fierce conflicts regarding good and bad behavior? How are such things as “nobility” and being in “the right hands” not basically just political prejudices rooted in dasein?

Then we move on to demonstrating that all of this unfolds in a unverse in which free will is compatible with determinism.

That’s original.

Exactly: that scintilla of evidence nowadays they call miracles.