Determinism

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.

Some things are obvious.
Success and failure are usually obvious things.

Well, they are obvious either because we can freely think ourselves into believing this or because this discussion itself is merely a necessary manifestation of a wholly determined universe.

Same with success or failure.

But, given human autonomy, one person’s material success can be seen by others as a moral failure.

Then what? Then what is “obvious”, right?

For example, to you.

That then seen by me to be the embodiment of dasein.

Though by no means obviously. Let alone necessarily.

Let’s apply this to the world as we know it, then.

Would humanity be better off if everyone shared your style of thinking?

Obvious as in : easy to sense. Like the sun. It is easy to sense.

But there are people who are senseless, too.

Here we clearly approach philosophy differently. My own understanding of the serious philosopher is of someone intent on understanding human interactions not in terms of what makes them “better off” but the extent to which the arguments they pose in grappling with the human condition reflect a more or less reasonable assessment.

My own assessment revolves around the points I raise in my signature threads — given some measure of human volition. They are either more or less reasonable than the assessments of those who do in fact feel better off in believing what they do.

All we can then do is to explore each other’s assumptions by examining them in particular contexts. And, given the nature of this thread, by assuming that the assessments are derived autonomously, of our own free will.

What on earth does this have to do with the point I raise about compatibilism above? Let’s get back to that.

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

On the contrary, what makes this discussion and debate particularly tricky is that we must first start out with the assumption that any working definition we arrive at is one in which we were free to have chosen another one instead. Right from the beginning we are stuck. So, compelled or not, here we go.

For example:

What if this philosophically respectable way of defining it is the only possible way that one ever could have defined it? And then around and around we – everyone – goes.

Then the part that peacegirl seemed to focus in on: “…the extent that a person has free will is the extent to which they are morally responsible for their actions, where moral responsibility is predicated on their ability to make choices.”

The fact that, unlike rocks and other mindless matter, we actually do choose. And, thus, moral responsibility rests entirely on that. Like, say, intuitions themselves are something that rocks don’t have and so the matter comprising minds/brains that produce them is qualitatively different from all other matter.

And it surely is that. But if all the consequences/effects that our minds/brains precipitate is also wholly in sync with – caused by – the laws of matter that govern rocks, how is responsibility itself not just another manifestation of the only possible reality?

I’m always willing to acknowledge that I’m not thinking this through correctly, if the compatibilists are willing to acknowledge that they were only ever able to think it through as they do.

Then what?

I’m sorry, but given the manner in which I construe a wholly determined universe, human “rationality” produces a man or a woman that like the rock unfolds into the only possible future. Here only the existence of a God, the God allows me to imagine an entity able to create material objects – us – in possession of whatever “free will” actually is. And even here there’s the problem [for me] of those who insist that their own God is omniscient. How is that squared with human autonomy?

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

Think about this.

You argue that the “very notion of free will is incoherent” while convinced that nothing can really be incoherent if it can only ever be what it must be in accordance with the immutable laws of physics.

It’s just another example of how language becomes entangled in itself when it is taken this far out on the metaphysical limb.

Should say? Shouldn’t say? See the mind-boggling problem here once you conclude that everything you say or don’t say is compelled by nature?

Thus…

Indeed, the best way to go about exploring all of this is entirely up in the stratosphere of intellectual abstractions. That way, having or not have free will, or moral responsibility being compatible or not compatible with determinism, can be assessed ever and always academically in a “world of words”.

Still, how can we yank the words down to earth when we have no way of knowing for certain that the yank itself could ever have been other than what it must be?

Of course this exasperates some considerably more than others. On the other hand, how could it have been otherwise?

And around and around we go.

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

Okay, but they are no less stuck than the compatibilists. Who are no less stuck than the champions of free will. In other words, connecting the dots ontologically [as mere mortals] between what any particular brain thinks and a comprehensive understanding of existence itself. With or without God.

In pondering what may or may not be “beyond our control” we may well be pondering only what we were ever able to ponder.

Yo, peacegirl!

Imagine a tornado bearing down on you. Now, unlike the material elements in the twister itself, the material elements in your brain result in a conscious choice. Matter having evolved to the point where it becomes self-conscious of itself making a choice. A chosen behavior that others may call either rational or not rational. But: the behavior chosen itself like the reactions to that behavior was the only possible behavior and reactions that could have been chosen by brains no less in sync with the laws of nature than any weather phenomenon.

Again, this is the part where I readily admit I am not thinking compatibilism through correctly. But in the manner in which I understand determinism/incompatibilism, I think things through – all things – in the only possible way in which I can think them through.

What then am I missing here in the compatibilist argument?

Well, to me [still] whether or not our behavior is inevitable is the only issue. If it is inevitable than how can “the rational deliberation of patterns which are represented as choices”, leading up to that behavior not in turn be wholly determined by the laws of matter?

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

This may well be be even more difficult to wrap one’s head around. Clearly we live in an either/or world in which interactions appear to be anything but random and uncaused. Distinctions are made between correlation and cause and effect but a “human condition” governed by “evitable” choices would be…what exactly? Things just “happen” out of the blue for no discernable – discoverable – reason at all? Well, maybe in your neighborhood, but it doesn’t appear to be that way at all in mine.

Even using the expression “in essence, random and uncaused” would be random and uncaused. As would be our “beliefs or desires of mental states”.

Huh? Would someone explain that further please.

No, really, instead of demonstrable evidence that brings us closer to the conviction that human autonomy exists only at a minimum, the evidence seemed to suggest that, on the contrary, the outcome of our behaviors were actually dependent more on a maximum of random or accidental encounters. Which would be harder to wrap your head around? And what if it turns out to be that the “human condition” combines both in such a way that we can never know for certain the degree to which we are responsible for the behaviors we choose?

And then into this moral and political quagmire introduce the components of my own thinking here.

But what he can’t conclude definitively is whether his conclusion itself was only as it ever could have been. Or the extent to which in coming to it, he was embedded in an unfolding reality that included “random or accidental outcomes”. Any more than you and I can know beyond all doubt all the factors involved in posting on this thread.

He can only take this particular “intellectual contraption” to the hard guys conducting actual scientific experiments with the human brain in order to determine more substantively – rigorously, phenomenologically – what the final determination is most likely to be “here and now”.

Leaving aside altogether [for now] the things that most intrigue me philosophically: morality here and now, immortality there and then.

Wow. Could there be a God, a Heaven and a Hell, a reincarnated soul, a Nirvana. But all that too just being some murky intermingling of determined and random interactions?