I think Ayer is right in a way. Most people are not going to go in deeper and will be satisfied to know they do not have contraints, when free.iambiguous wrote:Bianco Luno
Ayer, for instance, relieves the stress
from the freedom/determinism impasse by showing us how freedom, as we commonly use the term, implies an absence of constraint, not a dearth of causation, a clear requirement for avoiding freedom’s devolution to sheer chance.
The terms, ‘determinism’ and ‘causation’, are given a threatening cast by our fear of being forced, brought to heal by others or circumstances when all they suggest is that it is possible to provide an explanation in the light of past events for present or future events.
His critical distinction—that cause is not constraint but an observable enabling regularity—intended to soothe our alarm and give the determinist her or his minimum, itself, however, too facilely assumes we will compromise with fate.
All along we could have done that with less ceremony and stilled this inquietude and many others were we willing to live within the small boundaries of facts.
It is hardly accidental that we allow the figurative grime on our terms the reign we do.
What you so coolly, offhandedly, offer me as a facilitating circumstance I choose to view as blackmail because I want to read meaning in excess of what I would attribute to you if you were a stone.
It is from a kind of love that I accuse you of the greatest crime in the world: impersonating a stone.
But my hatred, too and not less, would honor you.
Ayer surely jokes.
Surely then, that settles that.
Eyeballs spooned out, impalings through body cavities, genital mutilations...
A few of us engage in this sort of thing and worse; the rest delight (and not even secretly) in hearing about it, reading about it, expressing offense.
This is supreme love.
And yet, depending on one's point of view, that may well be the least of it.
Moreno wrote:I think Ayer is right in a way. Most people are not going to go in deeper and will be satisfied to know they do not have contraints, when free.
But that's really meaningless. They don't have a they. In what sense are they even separated out from their environment. It's just dominoes. Sure, there are internal dominoes and external ones. Like, whoopie.
I'm not sure which parts or if you mean all parts of what I wrote.iambiguous wrote:Moreno wrote:I think Ayer is right in a way. Most people are not going to go in deeper and will be satisfied to know they do not have contraints, when free.
But that's really meaningless. They don't have a they. In what sense are they even separated out from their environment. It's just dominoes. Sure, there are internal dominoes and external ones. Like, whoopie.
I know that's true.
I know that's not true.
Then what?
Moreno wrote:
I'm not sure which parts or if you mean all parts of what I wrote.
Moreno wrote:Someone is raped. This is a horrible experience in an of itself. Then they are counseled to view this as a 'learning experience' (solely) or an act of God to test their faith and that they should feel good or OK about the experience.
Moreno wrote:If you and I or one of us or someone comes to believe that these explainings away are inadequate at best, then perhaps we are more ready for some other step. But this in itself is no small thing.
Moreno wrote:I mean, it is all very nice for the 'I have no self, I do not persist through time, I have no free will, there is no meaning, we are all separated by filters from reality and others. (etc)' camp to say 'and I am just fine with that.' they 'are not like the deluded religious or the believers in selves or freedom or others weak enough to be bothered by this.' Fine. I think this is likely much less true then they believe. I think they often confuse their little mental thinky opinions with what they believe. But who knows, perhaps they really don't mind. In the end however skeptical I am, I don't really care. and the more that noise is moved out of my own head - one can see them as mirroring back ideas already present in my own mind - perhaps I can discover something new.
iambiguous wrote:]
I'm not sure which parts or if you mean all parts of what I wrote.
Moreno wrote:Someone is raped. This is a horrible experience in an of itself. Then they are counseled to view this as a 'learning experience' (solely) or an act of God to test their faith and that they should feel good or OK about the experience.
These are ways to stay on the surface. It happened because [for some reason] it was meant to. The determinists just take that argument, ratchet it up and take it out to the very end of the limb: everything happens because it could not not have happened.
I know, I think, what I am talking about, but I am avoiding many areas of the debate. I would think of trying to demonstrate free will, for example.Or so it seems to me. But I will be the first to admit the problem here is me: I really don't know what the hell I am talking about. It's just over my head.
Moreno wrote:If you and I or one of us or someone comes to believe that these explainings away are inadequate at best, then perhaps we are more ready for some other step. But this in itself is no small thing.
I don't see how determinism or free will being the case actually changes our choosing how to live. It may depress us or scare us into suicide, respectively, I suppose. But I can still strive to be kind and good, regardless of whether this has all been determined in advance or the world really could go in a number of directions and from some uncaused place I can choose.For me, however, the next step is rooting all of this in dasein. And in conflicting goods. And in a world where there is no way in which to determine [philosophically, scientifically etc.] how one ought to live, how one ought to behave around others.
so how does this relate to free will and determinism? To me, in terms of relating to other people, its like the difference between living on a world without the color blue as opposed to a world without the color red. The issue has ramifications for how I feel about life, but in terms of how I want to relate to other people, it really doesn't matter. I think, at least.Well put. But: Our ideas about these things will always be situated out in a particular world---one that we actually experience from day to day with more or less happiness, contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction etc.. The idea is to live your life using whatever works. Until it bumps into the lives of others and there is conflict.
Then you have to try to figure something out.
Moreno wrote:Well, a determinist by being a determinist really cannot claim they know the reasons they have for their beliefs. Not that someone who believes in freewill can therefore claim they do - or doesn't have other problems.
Moreno wrote:I just need to be very clear, my [rape] example had nothing to do with determinism. Perhaps one could tie them together, but that was not my intent. I was simply drawing an analogy between a person experiencing something unpleasant - the potential truth of determinism, being raped - being told why it is really OK or doesn't bother someone else.
Moreno wrote:I actually see no reason to believe determinists would be more likely than anyone else to try to explain away the naturalness of reacting very negatively to being raped.
For me, however, the next step is rooting all of this in dasein. And in conflicting goods. And in a world where there is no way in which to determine [philosophically, scientifically etc.] how one ought to live, how one ought to behave around others.
Moreno wrote:I don't see how determinism or free will being the case actually changes our choosing how to live. It may depress us or scare us into suicide, respectively, I suppose. But I can still strive to be kind and good, regardless of whether this has all been determined in advance or the world really could go in a number of directions and from some uncaused place I can choose.
Moreno wrote:If I was utterly convinced determinism was the case, I would not then decide to act meanly to children.
Our ideas about these things will always be situated out in a particular world---one that we actually experience from day to day with more or less happiness, contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction etc.. The idea is to live your life using whatever works. Until it bumps into the lives of others and there is conflict.
Then you have to try to figure something out.
Moreno wrote:so how does this relate to free will and determinism? To me, in terms of relating to other people, its like the difference between living on a world without the color blue as opposed to a world without the color red.
Moreno wrote:Can you tell me how the lack of resolution on the issue affects how you interact with other people or your moral code, etc.?
Sure, they can claim to know, but basically for all they know this claiming is like your leg jumping when the doctor does a knee reflex test.iambiguous wrote:They can claim to know but the fact of the claim itself is not something they chose freely. Their beliefs are only what they must be.
But how does the proponent of free will get around the arguments the volchoks make about matter being the same "stuff"; and all rooted in the laws on physics?
Moreno wrote:I actually see no reason to believe determinists would be more likely than anyone else to try to explain away the naturalness of reacting very negatively to being raped.
Sure, the determinist could ARGUE like this. But as social mammals I see no reason for them too. And, in fact, non-determinists, for example religious ones, have justified rape either openly or indirectly with victim blaming coded messages.But the determinist necessarily sees everything as "natural". Being raped or not being raped is merely human dominoes falling in one direction and not another. Same with our reactions to rape.
I find that most people do not actually try to see what ideas do in situ. What is actually happening, not what should happen given the words in the mind and the logic in the mind, etc.Human biology is what it is. And human mental, emotional and psychological reactions are what they are. These, in my view, are the implications of determinism the volchoks don't really own up to. They keep harping about how we choose and the dominoes don't as though it really makes any difference if we cannot choose to choose something else instead.
I find Stanford's online philosophy resource generally very clear. Here is their article on compatibilism.I just don't get "compatibilism".
But notice what your focus is on here: your focus is on how you feel about the whole situation. You have not argued that you would no longer strive to be kind. Or to put this in determinist terms. You are not arguing that believing in determinist would CAUSE you to be more cruel or less caring. And this was the issue. I absolutely agree about the emotional effects of the non-existence of free will, but that I would end up being meaner, I don't think so.If that works for you, great. But if I believed that choosing to be kind and good is something I could not not have chosen then I recognize that those who choose to be rotten sons of bitches are in the same boat. I'd like to believe instead that "I" had something to do with it. While acknowledging the manner in which "I" is always embodied in dasein---and in all of the things "I" do not understand or control.
Moreno wrote:If I was utterly convinced determinism was the case, I would not then decide to act meanly to children.
So we change the language into determinist. I don't think that if I was convinced determinism was the case, this would cause me to treat children or anyone else less well. How bout you?Here you lose me. If you are "convinced determinism is the case" then you are deciding only what you must decide. It's only the illusion of choice.
Moreno wrote:Can you tell me how the lack of resolution on the issue affects how you interact with other people or your moral code, etc.?
Moreno wrote:Sure, they can claim to know, but basically for all they know this claiming is like your leg jumping when the doctor does a knee reflex test.iambiguous wrote:They can claim to know but the fact of the claim itself is not something they chose freely. Their beliefs are only what they must be.
...how does the proponent of free will get around the arguments the volchoks make about matter being the same "stuff"; and all rooted in the laws on physics?
Moreno wrote:I don't have an argument for the best versions of these. I have repeatedly said that 'physical' is a meaningless term and also that we are in the middle of the history of science, not the end, so final proclamations seem weak to me.
Moreno wrote:Basically the determinist has to argue that there are two possibilities: random and completely controlled events. Or what is basically a combination in stochasitic processes. We use deduction from here and decide free will is not supported by either. Fine. But science has thought it understood the range of possibilities before and then found out this was not the case.
...the determinist necessarily sees everything as "natural". Being raped or not being raped is merely human dominoes falling in one direction and not another. Same with our reactions to rape.
Moreno wrote:Sure, the determinist could ARGUE like this. But as social mammals I see no reason for them too. And, in fact, non-determinists, for example religious ones, have justified rape either openly or indirectly with victim blaming coded messages.
Human biology is what it is. And human mental, emotional and psychological reactions are what they are. These, in my view, are the implications of determinism the volchoks don't really own up to. They keep harping about how we choose and the dominoes don't as though it really makes any difference if we cannot choose to choose something else instead.
Moreno wrote:I find that most people do not actually try to see what ideas do in situ. What is actually happening, not what should happen given the words in the mind and the logic in the mind, etc.
If that works for you, great. But if I believed that choosing to be kind and good is something I could not not have chosen then I recognize that those who choose to be rotten sons of bitches are in the same boat. I'd like to believe instead that "I" had something to do with it. While acknowledging the manner in which "I" is always embodied in dasein---and in all of the things "I" do not understand or control.
Moreno wrote:But notice what your focus is on here: your focus is on how you feel about the whole situation. You have not argued that you would no longer strive to be kind. Or to put this in determinist terms. You are not arguing that believing in determinist would CAUSE you to be more cruel or less caring. And this was the issue. I absolutely agree about the emotional effects of the non-existence of free will, but that I would end up being meaner, I don't think so.
Moreno wrote:So we change the language into determinist. I don't think that if I was convinced determinism was the case, this would cause me to treat children or anyone else less well. How bout you?
I interact with others ambiguously, precariously. I see good reasons for endorsing many conflicting sides in most moral and political issues. I make my leap knowing that, had things been different in my life, I might not have.
As, in other words, an ironist.
Moreno wrote:YOu mean if you became convinced determinism was true you would no longer be an ironist, no longer see conflicting sides in moral and political issues, etc.?
Sure, they can claim to know, but basically for all they know this claiming is like your leg jumping when the doctor does a knee reflex test.
NO, not for all any of us know. That description comes directly from their beliefs. Their beliefs essentially support the idea that their acts of claiming are like that.iambiguous wrote:For all any of us know. To wit:
Yes. I think there is a great urge out there to silence anything that implies mystery, confusion, potential large scale paradigmantic problems, etc. So scientific knowledge gets spouted as if science has finished.That is basically my point to volchok: just because I don't have a definitive argument now doesn't mean there isn't one. And science is just beginning to explore this particular characteristic of the human brain. And the brain is surely the most complex matter around. Sans God.
There are Eastern Practices that have an empirical process - one requiring a rather huge investment of time - to investigate this issue.How does consciousness grapple with explaining what consciousness itself is? What does it even mean for "I" to know this?
Though the QM universe is probablistic. Hence there would be many kind of order and not the chaos of the random. Some things are (vastly) more likely than other things in QM.Yes, the determinist has to argue this. As for a random universe I simply cannot wrap my mind around it. Even the quantum folks are still baffled over this. And that, perhaps, is just in this universe.
...the determinist necessarily sees everything as "natural". Being raped or not being raped is merely human dominoes falling in one direction and not another. Same with our reactions to rape.
Moreno wrote:Sure, the determinist could ARGUE like this. But as social mammals I see no reason for them too. And, in fact, non-determinists, for example religious ones, have justified rape either openly or indirectly with victim blaming coded messages.
Yes, in a physicalist determinism the mental is really matter with new emerged but still physical and determined qualities.But doesn't reason enter into it here only as an inherent manifestation of matter evolving into it per the immutable laws of matter? The "mental" is merely matter that has been manipulated [molded] by nature into imagining it is not manipulated at all. That it is "free" to choose its own way.
I suppose one could describe my beliefs around it this way.And non-determinists like me root rape and our reactions to it in dasein---in daseins rooted [in unimaginably complex ways] in nature intertwined [in unimaginably complex ways] in nurture.
Human biology is what it is. And human mental, emotional and psychological reactions are what they are. These, in my view, are the implications of determinism the volchoks don't really own up to. They keep harping about how we choose and the dominoes don't as though it really makes any difference if we cannot choose to choose something else instead.
Moreno wrote:I find that most people do not actually try to see what ideas do in situ. What is actually happening, not what should happen given the words in the mind and the logic in the mind, etc.
The man - I assume - iambiguous - that body will do this and not that. The causes may include calculated preferences. In a physicalist determinism these preferences and the process for arriving at them - which would be in that conception some mixture of nature and nuture - is of course determined. But that body cannot be taken out of the equation. It is not like the whole of you has no effects, that is what V is trying to point out. You have effects, you go through a process of choosing (and many sub-processes of deciding, for example what is true, good, etc.) but these are all determined, yes. Whether consciousness has any effect, the conscious 'I' is an issue within physicalism - see epiphenomenalism.I get stuck on the idea that, given determinism, to choose one thing as opposed to something else is just an illusion. What is happening actually is what actually must happen. "I" have nothing to do with it other then in having acquired matter in my brain that evolved to the point I can note this. But I cannot not note this.
If that works for you, great. But if I believed that choosing to be kind and good is something I could not not have chosen then I recognize that those who choose to be rotten sons of bitches are in the same boat. I'd like to believe instead that "I" had something to do with it. While acknowledging the manner in which "I" is always embodied in dasein---and in all of the things "I" do not understand or control.
Moreno wrote:But notice what your focus is on here: your focus is on how you feel about the whole situation. You have not argued that you would no longer strive to be kind. Or to put this in determinist terms. You are not arguing that believing in determinist would CAUSE you to be more cruel or less caring. And this was the issue. I absolutely agree about the emotional effects of the non-existence of free will, but that I would end up being meaner, I don't think so.
Sure, and any theory based on dasein will say the same.But where does how I think about the whole situation stop and how I feel about it begin? Or the other way around? I can imagine someone raised in an environment where being kind and good [at least to each other] is the functional norm. But I can also imagine an environment in which you come to assume it is basically a dog eat dog world and being kind and good is a weakness you just cannot afford.
Determinism doesn't eliminate nature. It seems like in the paragraph previous to this last you focus on nurture, culture and then in the second express a concern about the loss of nature in determining actions. Well, the development of new things seems to be determined, if determinism is correct. And humans, unlike other animals, can as individuals change due to an incredibly wide range of factors. We tend to have more flexible learning systems.These things are always situated [for each of us] in a particular world rooted in a particular time and place. Evolution [human biology] provides us with the capacity to be either kind or cruel. Does it provide us with the capacity to choose one over the other? Does it provide us with the capacity to encounter new experiences, new relationshipos, new points of view...and change our minds?
Yes. But to what extent is any of this done autonomously?
I don't understand the "determinist terms" here. If determinism is true, I am kind or cruel per nature's design.
WE don't know that waves do not have consciousness or sense of choice.Just as the tides ebb and flow per nature's design. What is the difference other than, unlike the tides, I embody the illusion of being able to freely choose one over the other?
To wit:
You:
If I was utterly convinced determinism was the case, I would not then decide to act meanly to children.
Me:
Here you lose me. If you are "convinced determinism is the case" then you are deciding only what you must decide. It's only the illusion of choice.
Moreno wrote:So we change the language into determinist. I don't think that if I was convinced determinism was the case, this would cause me to treat children or anyone else less well. How bout you?
If I was absolutely convinced of determinism -- if science demonstrated it beyond all doubt -- I would think: I may be kind toward children, I may be cruel. But my choice to be one or the other is mine only in the sense that a lightbulb chooses to be on or off depending on the position of the switch.
In some ways that might comfort me, in other ways it might not. But so what? My reaction is also just a manifestation of the ineluctable law of matter.
Yes.Again, "compatibilism" here is still illusory to me. The bottom line: what happens must happen.
I interact with others ambiguously, precariously. I see good reasons for endorsing many conflicting sides in most moral and political issues. I make my leap knowing that, had things been different in my life, I might not have.
As, in other words, an ironist.
Moreno wrote:YOu mean if you became convinced determinism was true you would no longer be an ironist, no longer see conflicting sides in moral and political issues, etc.?
No, notice your confusion here. You would have already been doing this all along. I understand how it is a depressing idea, but you have seemed several time to have implied that it would cause you to be different ethically, or here around irony.Yes, but I would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator. I would make choices but only as I was programed to by nature.
Moreno wrote: Me:Sure, they can claim to know, but basically for all they know this claiming is like your leg jumping when the doctor does a knee reflex test.NO, not for all any of us know. That description comes directly from their beliefs. Their beliefs essentially support the idea that their acts of claiming are like that.iambiguous wrote:For all any of us know. To wit:
That is not the case for all of us.
But doesn't reason enter into it here only as an inherent manifestation of matter evolving into it per the immutable laws of matter? The "mental" is merely matter that has been manipulated [molded] by nature into imagining it is not manipulated at all. That it is "free" to choose its own way.
Moreno wrote:Yes, in a physicalist determinism the mental is really matter with new emerged but still physical and determined qualities.
I get stuck on the idea that, given determinism, to choose one thing as opposed to something else is just an illusion. What is happening actually is what actually must happen. "I" have nothing to do with it other then in having acquired matter in my brain that evolved to the point I can note this. But I cannot not note this
Moreno wrote:The man - I assume - iambiguous - that body will do this and not that. The causes may include calculated preferences. In a physicalist determinism these preferences and the process for arriving at them - which would be in that conception some mixture of nature and nuture - is of course determined. But that body cannot be taken out of the equation. It is not like the whole of you has no effects, that is what V is trying to point out.
Moreno wrote:You have effects, you go through a process of choosing (and many sub-processes of deciding, for example what is true, good, etc.) but these are all determined, yes. Whether consciousness has any effect, the conscious 'I' is an issue within physicalism - see epiphenomenalism.
But yeah, sure, if determinism is correct, you[r] choices tomorrow were well determined already in the first seconds of the Big Bang.
These things are always situated [for each of us] in a particular world rooted in a particular time and place. Evolution [human biology] provides us with the capacity to be either kind or cruel. Does it provide us with the capacity to choose one over the other? Does it provide us with the capacity to encounter new experiences, new relationshipos, new points of view...and change our minds?
Moreno wrote:Determinism doesn't eliminate nature. It seems like in the paragraph previous to this last you focus on nurture, culture and then in the second express a concern about the loss of nature in determining actions. Well, the development of new things seems to be determined, if determinism is correct. And humans, unlike other animals, can as individuals change due to an incredibly wide range of factors. We tend to have more flexible learning systems.
If I was absolutely convinced of determinism -- if science demonstrated it beyond all doubt -- I would think: I may be kind toward children, I may be cruel. But my choice to be one or the other is mine only in the sense that a lightbulb chooses to be on or off depending on the position of the switch.
In some ways that might comfort me, in other ways it might not. But so what? My reaction is also just a manifestation of the ineluctable law of matter.
Moreno wrote:Sure, but it seems to me part of your concern was that if determinism was true people would be more cruel.
Moreno wrote:Your rape example - or was it mine. I do not think this is the case. I understand how the idea depresses you, but I don't see yet why determinism being true and/or your belief in it would make you be less moral.
Moreno wrote:You mean if you became convinced determinism was true you would no longer be an ironist, no longer see conflicting sides in moral and political issues, etc.?
Yes, but I would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator. I would make choices but only as I was programed to by nature.
Moreno wrote:No, notice your confusion here. You would have already been doing this all along. I understand how it is a depressing idea, but you have seemed several time to have implied that it would cause you to be different ethically, or here around irony.
Moreno wrote:Try to separate the two ideas: in one we are talking about how your view of what was happening would change. In the other we are talking about how you would act differently.
yes, but that is not getting the context of what I wrote. Given that we do not know, you and I, we can only look at the various positions. One irony of the determinist position is they are basically saying they have no idea what their own real motivations are for believing what they believe -including the belief in determinism. This is not true for people advocating other positions. The position itself should entail an admission that they really cannot know if they are being logical in arriving at their opinion determinism is the case.iambiguous wrote:If determinism is true, everything we think, feel, believe, do etc. is just a knee jerk reflex. It's natural. It's natural in that it comes wholly from nature. The fact that some don't believe it is doesn't change that. Our problem is we don't seem to know for certain if this is true.
a non-physical determinism simply means that one does not believe that all substrance is physical, but still you believe all events are determined entirely by past ones. Calvinists would be an example of such a belief system. They did believe in a soul that had an afterlife, but they believed, given God's omnicience, that this afterlife was already decided long ago.Then I am not clear on what might be construed as a non-physicalist determinism. If minds are a kind of matter and matter is a kind of energy and all three interact in space-time per the immutable laws of nature then this entire exchange we are having is only as it could have been. "I" either have some measure of autonomy here or "I" don't.
I understand that I have effects. I understand that I choose what I do in order to generate these effects. But if I could not not have chosen these things how is that really different from the effects falling dominoes have on each other?
Sure.Which is why some subscribe [cling?] to the idea that it is not correct. They have a deep-seated intuitive sense of "choosing" between alternative effects.
Obviously. Mammals minds can change, including our minds. This happens. No one disputes this in the practical sense of a kind person can end up being cruel and vice versa.These things are always situated [for each of us] in a particular world rooted in a particular time and place. Evolution [human biology] provides us with the capacity to be either kind or cruel. Does it provide us with the capacity to choose one over the other? Does it provide us with the capacity to encounter new experiences, new relationshipos, new points of view...and change our minds?
Yes, if D is true.Determinism here would seem to be a way in which to describe the methodology of nature. Nature unfolds as it was determined to unfold given that all the "stuff" in nature interacts in accordance with laws that do not exclude us. Nurture then is just the way nature unfolds [must unfold] for each of us postpartum. Dasein therefore is merely something I was unable not to embrace as an alternative approach to understanding why I chose what I did. It's just the illusion I harbor about my alleged autonomy.
Yes, if D is true.My being more or less moral is like the tides ebbing or flowing. It is what it is because it could not have been otherwise. And my being more or less depressed can only be understood in the same thing. If determinism is true it happens because it could not not happen.
I don't know how to determine that.And you and I and volchok knowing this in the manner in which we do is the only manner in which we could have known it.
Moreno wrote:iambiguous wrote:If determinism is true, everything we think, feel, believe, do etc. is just a knee jerk reflex. It's natural. It's natural in that it comes wholly from nature. The fact that some don't believe it is doesn't change that. Our problem is we don't seem to know for certain if this is true.
yes, but that is not getting the context of what I wrote. Given that we do not know, you and I, we can only look at the various positions. One irony of the determinist position is they are basically saying they have no idea what their own real motivations are for believing what they believe -including the belief in determinism.
Moreno wrote:This is not true for people advocating other positions. The position itself should entail an admission that they really cannot know if they are being logical in arriving at their opinion determinism is the case.
...I am not clear on what might be construed as a non-physicalist determinism. If minds are a kind of matter and matter is a kind of energy and all three interact in space-time per the immutable laws of nature then this entire exchange we are having is only as it could have been. "I" either have some measure of autonomy here or "I" don't.
Moreno wrote:a non-physical determinism simply means that one does not believe that all substrance is physical, but still you believe all events are determined entirely by past ones. Calvinists would be an example of such a belief system. They did believe in a soul that had an afterlife, but they believed, given God's omnicience, that this afterlife was already decided long ago.
I understand that I have effects. I understand that I choose what I do in order to generate these effects. But if I could not not have chosen these things how is that really different from the effects falling dominoes have on each other?
Moreno wrote:It's not different.
I will try this one more time, then I will give up.
As far as I can tell you have claimed two unpleasant results of determinism being the case:
1) I am just dominoes, everything that will happen could only have happened and nothing else. The belief in/acceptance of the fact of determinism affects my mood negatively because determinism means.......
2) People have no reason (or even less) to be nice/moral, since everything is natural. The belief in/acceptance of the fact of determinism affects how people will ACT negatively because determinism means......(all acts are natural, etc)
I utterly agree that one is the case if determinism is true. At least for you and me and likely many other people.
I disagree that 2 is the case.
Moreno wrote:I do not find it to be the case that determinists are more prone to immoral behavior and I think that given that we are social mammals that even in the absence of a notion of free will, there are plenty of causes to make us be good.
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