Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
Without judgement what would we do?
We would be forced to look
At ourselves emerged in lost time
Assuming what may be without judgement
Perception would increase a million times
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
That's determinism
It will not happen no matter what you want. It will happen because you want a certain thing.
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
That's determinism
It will not happen no matter what you want. It will happen because you want a certain thing.
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
That's determinism
It will not happen no matter what you want. It will happen because you want a certain thing.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
That is incoherent.
How so? If free will is real, then the implications is that you are personal responsible for your crime. It is something YOU did. Ergo, justice is punishment centric, for you to atone for your actions.
However, operating under determinism means that there is an understanding that the crime happened for a reason. There is something broken about the person that led to this crime. Justice in this case is rehabilition-based, determining why a person took this action and how it can be corrected.
Either way, what we do know is that our current prison system clearly doesn't work. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, for profit prisons, de facto slavery, rape and violence as a normalized fact of life, all because society doesn't want to help and protect "bad people."
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
That is incoherent.
How so? If free will is real, then the implications is that you are personal responsible for your crime. It is something YOU did. Ergo, justice is punishment centric, for you to atone for your actions.
However, operating under determinism means that there is an understanding that the crime happened for a reason. There is something broken about the person that led to this crime. Justice in this case is rehabilition-based, determining why a person took this action and how it can be corrected.
Either way, what we do know is that our current prison system clearly doesn't work. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, for profit prisons, de facto slavery, rape and violence as a normalized fact of life, all because society doesn't want to help and protect "bad people."
I actually like where you're going in the center of this.
A question about if the fault seemingly cannot be corrected, if its permanently broken? How do we determine if the fault is corrected? As well is it possible that you don't necessarily need any kind of fault correction for certain crimes? Is it possible that simply correcting the context of the person would prevent further crime?
More foundationally how do we determine what is crime? Is it necessary to determine that things are crimes? As you say they happened for a reason. It was always supposed to happen. Why is it a crime? Is there necessarily anything to correct?
(Please note none of this is meant to be an argument about the broader point that our prison system is totally fucked, it'd be pretty hard to argue that one... considering its totally fucked)
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
And in a deterministic world there is a way to say that you have limited control of your actions.
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
What does it mean to play a "true part" in something?
Why does determinism have to automatically equal predeterminism?
Like this keeps feeling now like we’re trying to ascribe will to the universe or the Big Bang, instead of saying “event X was caused by Event W, which We can follow back to being a result of confluences V and U, etc.”
which is also weird because if you break the argument down it feels like saying “you didn’t decide, something decided for you because decision doesn’t really exist.” And I don’t know if that’s just syntax breaking down or what.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
So i can't hold my rapist responsible for my rape it is because something in their past stunted their development in some way and the universe is responsible for me getting raped for years instead of that person.
Again please build me any kind of moral framework on determinism
Of course you can hold a rapist responsible, especially if "something in their past stunted their development."
If there's a characteristic about a person that makes them predisposed to rape, it behooves us to remove that person from endangering the public until that characteristic can be corrected or contained.
And as long as punishment has a deterrent effect (which it does, at least when used correctly) then it also behooves us to punish rapists.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Here's the thing i'm not even to punishment, simply holding them responsible.
Why are they responsible for an action at the end of an inevitable causality, and not say the thing that fucked them up, or whatever caused that fucked up thing to happen?
Why can we assign it to just the object at the end of that particular causality and not every object on the way to that causality?
Why does determinism have to automatically equal predeterminism?
Like this keeps feeling now like we’re trying to ascribe will to the universe or the Big Bang, instead of saying “event X was caused by Event W, which We can follow back to being a result of confluences V and U, etc.”
which is also weird because if you break the argument down it feels like saying “you didn’t decide, something decided for you because decision doesn’t really exist.” And I don’t know if that’s just syntax breaking down or what.
I literally don't understand how, "everything is determined" doesn't indicate "everything is pre determined".
If every state of the universe is the exact and only way it could have occurred then 6 seconds from now can only go one way because when it finally resolves and we can actually perceive it, it was the only way it could have ever happened
Here's the thing i'm not even to punishment, simply holding them responsible.
Why are they responsible for an action at the end of an inevitable causality, and not say the thing that fucked them up, or whatever caused that fucked up thing to happen?
Why can we assign it to just the object at the end of that particular causality and not every object on the way to that causality?
What value is there in assigning *sole* responsibility to only part of the problem?
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
That is incoherent.
How so? If free will is real, then the implications is that you are personal responsible for your crime. It is something YOU did. Ergo, justice is punishment centric, for you to atone for your actions.
However, operating under determinism means that there is an understanding that the crime happened for a reason. There is something broken about the person that led to this crime. Justice in this case is rehabilition-based, determining why a person took this action and how it can be corrected.
Either way, what we do know is that our current prison system clearly doesn't work. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, for profit prisons, de facto slavery, rape and violence as a normalized fact of life, all because society doesn't want to help and protect "bad people."
Bolded: No. This isn't operating under determinism. The punishment is just as much pre-determined as the crime. That's what makes the first statement incoherent. In order to act on determinism as a moral thing you have to be not determined. So it doesn't work.
I'm ok with society simply assuming moral agency exists. It doesn't matter whether moral agency is real or not, you can still assume people have it and build moral systems around it.
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Here's the thing i'm not even to punishment, simply holding them responsible.
Why are they responsible for an action at the end of an inevitable causality, and not say the thing that fucked them up, or whatever caused that fucked up thing to happen?
Why can we assign it to just the object at the end of that particular causality and not every object on the way to that causality?
I'm a consequentialist.
I hold somebody responsible for their undesirable actions if doing so would prevent future undesirable outcomes. "Responsibility" is just a means to an end: a way of diagnosing the proximal cause of an incident, so we can correct that cause and prevent future incidents.
If I could go back in time and stop a rapist from becoming a rapist, I would. But we haven't invented time travel, and stopping more rapes from occurring means correcting and/or containing rapists.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
To me, identifying and punishing criminals is somewhat similar to identifying the broken part in a car or computer or even in a human body.
I get kidney stones, which are exacerbated by diet and alcohol use. When I have one, I feel a unique kind of sharp pain in my flank. Now which of the following statements is true?
1) My kidney is responsible for the pain in my flank.
2) A kidney stone is responsible for the pain in my flank.
3) A buildup of uric acid in my body is responsible for the pain in my flank.
4) A diet too heavy in meat and cheese and alcohol
with insufficient vegetables and water is responsible for the pain in my flank.
Answer: they're all true. Which one is most relevant depends on the context of the conversation.
But regardless of all that, the pain isn't going away until I get rid of that stone. I can alter my diet today to prevent future stones, but I can't go back in time to correct a current kidney stone. All I can do is get rid of the fucker.
Human behavior is more complicated and there are a lot more unknowns than the urinary tract, which makes the diagnosis and correction process a lot fuzzier, but the basic mindset to me is the same. Root cause analysis is useful for prevention, but when problems are flaring up in the immediate moment, a more direct response is necessary.
Sometimes that direct response means having a heart to heart talk with your significant other and saying "look, I know nobody ever taught you to restock the icebox after you eat the plums being saved for breakfast, but I'm asking you now to make it a habit."
In more severe cases of misbehavior, the direct response involves handcuffs and jail cells.
I can anticipate a possible retort: we just flush kidney stones down the toilet. Does that mean a determinist framework renders humans just as disposable?
No, not necessarily. There are lots of reasons why we hold human life to be intrinsically valuable, none of which have anything to do with this conversation. Most of us have empathy for other humans, instinctively. We have a social contract, where we all benefit from treating human beings as valuable. Human beings are unassailably unique; we can't help but feel a sense of irreconcilable loss when another human dies (most of the time). Determinism doesn't change any of that.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
However, I do agree with Sleep here. If we lived in a deterministic universe our 'beliefs' are no more real and important than those of Sephiroth in FF7. We are just mechanical dolls moving along a precisely determined track.
Ok but Sephiroth does not actually have beliefs. But the realness of my beliefs is not in question, regardless of their origin. We are aware mechanical dolls.
Are we really or is that awareness the unfortunate echo of dominoes falling
? This is as nonsensical as asking whether that awareness is just molecules interacting. regardless of their origin. being an echo of falling dominoes does not make us not really aware.
the realness of our awareness is not in question. it is a given. it is literally our point of interaction with the world. not being mindless automatons is a founding principle of philosophy.
But being mindless automatons working on nothing but the forces that propel us is the central principal of this determinism.
what no. determinism just says that everything that happens is entirely determined by previously existing causes. it just says everything is cause and effect.
this does not mean we don't have minds, or a self. it does not mean the only valid way to describe the universe is as one dimensional strings, as if any other way is just "illusions" and not real. that the universe is also one dimensional strings does not mean any other way of looking at it is not valid.
To me, identifying and punishing criminals is somewhat similar to identifying the broken part in a car or computer or even in a human body.
I get kidney stones, which are exacerbated by diet and alcohol use. When I have one, I feel a unique kind of sharp pain in my flank. Now which of the following statements is true?
1) My kidney is responsible for the pain in my flank.
2) A kidney stone is responsible for the pain in my flank.
3) A buildup of uric acid in my body is responsible for the pain in my flank.
4) A diet too heavy in meat and cheese and alcohol
with insufficient vegetables and water is responsible for the pain in my flank.
Answer: they're all true. Which one is most relevant depends on the context of the conversation.
But regardless of all that, the pain isn't going away until I get rid of that stone. I can alter my diet today to prevent future stones, but I can't go back in time to correct a current kidney stone. All I can do is get rid of the fucker.
Human behavior is more complicated and there are a lot more unknowns than the urinary tract, which makes the diagnosis and correction process a lot fuzzier, but the basic mindset to me is the same. Root cause analysis is useful for prevention, but when problems are flaring up in the immediate moment, a more direct response is necessary.
Sometimes that direct response means having a heart to heart talk with your significant other and saying "look, I know nobody ever taught you to restock the icebox after you eat the plums being saved for breakfast, but I'm asking you now to make it a habit."
In more severe cases of misbehavior, the direct response involves handcuffs and jail cells.
I can anticipate a possible retort: we just flush kidney stones down the toilet. Does that mean a determinist framework renders humans just as disposable?
No, not necessarily. There are lots of reasons why we hold human life to be intrinsically valuable, none of which have anything to do with this conversation. Most of us have empathy for other humans, instinctively. We have a social contract, where we all benefit from treating human beings as valuable. Human beings are unassailably unique; we can't help but feel a sense of irreconcilable loss when another human dies (most of the time). Determinism doesn't change any of that.
Exactly disregard determinism it's useless to an ethical frame.
At best it's a curious idea to note, and then promptly not need to care about.
I keep wondering what role free will plays in people with severe brain injuries that result in personality changes - or in people with addictions, depression, or anxiety. What about people with dementia or brain cancer? Lobotomies? Schizophrenia? Mental retardation?
Why should someone with a severe dopamine deficiency be depressed? Why wouldn't they just cheer up and get over it?
Why are some people homosexual and others heterosexual? Why are some people more intelligent than others? Why are some people passionate while others are apathetic? Why do people like dubstep? Are these things choices?
Do these things have no effect on who someone is or how they think?
I think they do. It seems clear to me that a person's character can be drastically or subtlety altered in accordance with the condition of their grey matter. I don't understand arguments to the contrary. Are you not your brain?
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
The fact is that for one of the big three branches of ethics, consequentialism, our possessing of free will or not is entirely irrelevant. Doesn't matter. Don't need it. Perfectly content without it. Some people have been arguing this in this very thread even, now explicitly.
like, I'm fine with having an argument on ethics. but that is not the important concern in this debate.
According to consequentialism an action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
The agent could only perform action A because action A was the only thing that could have happened.
According to consequentialism an action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
The agent could only perform action A because action A was the only thing that could have happened.
Linguistic confusion: different senses of the word "could."
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
According to consequentialism an action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
The agent could only perform action A because action A was the only thing that could have happened.
The agent would have chosen differently if their will was influenced differently than it was. This is what "could" means in this case. This is different from a situation where the agent couldn't have done differently no matter what their will was.
Similar situations will arise in the future. Punishment or praise of those actions will influence their will and the will of others and result in different outcomes than if there was neither punishment nor praise for those actions.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this.
I will say that cosmic determinism is controversial. Maybe all events are locked in by an inexorable causal chain or not. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.
But like I tried to allude to above, cosmic indeterminism doesn't really fill the role we want it to. Maybe quarks or leptons aren't deterministic.Do you want to be at the mercy of truly random subatomic particles? The collapse of probabilistic waves at the quantum level.
Here's the payoff: You are a natural phenomenon. You are as real as Hurricane Andrew or the solar system.
Just because you're beholden to natural phenomena doesn't mean you aren't unique or complex or amazing.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I keep wondering what role free will plays in people with severe brain injuries that result in personality changes - or in people with addictions, depression, or anxiety. What about people with dementia or brain cancer? Lobotomies? Schizophrenia? Mental retardation?
Why should someone with a severe dopamine deficiency be depressed? Why wouldn't they just cheer up and get over it?
Why are some people homosexual and others heterosexual? Why are some people more intelligent than others? Why are some people passionate while others are apathetic? Why do people like dubstep? Are these things choices?
Do these things have no effect on who someone is or how they think?
I think they do. It seems clear to me that a person's character can be drastically or subtlety altered in accordance with the condition of their grey matter. I don't understand arguments to the contrary. Are you not your brain?
After I was diagnosed with ADD these questions have been rattling around my head non-stop because suddenly much of my behavior and my quirks were now directly traceable to a mental disorder. As a result, the more I think about it, the more I can't escape the conclusion that we don't truly have free will because our behavior and choices are so blatantly tied to the current state of the chemical jello mold floating around in our skulls at the time of the choice. My choices made when I was both on and coming down from the meds I tried out were very different from the choices I make when I'm not on anything. Hell, choices made when we're drunk or high are different from choices made when sober so what's the real us? Is there a real us? Scientific studies have demonstrated that the brain makes its decision about something sub-consciously before we think we consciously make the decision so do we have any actual conscious control over anything?
Personally, I'm leaning towards a hard no. That we don't have a "soul," true free will, or a true consciousness. If we did we wouldn't be susceptible to personality alterations via chemicals, disorders, or brain damage via injury or degradation via age. Our behavior as a species wouldn't be so easily broken down into basic, identifiable drives (i.e. tribalism). We're just as instinct and impulse driven as an insect, we just have a way better developed operating system.
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
The fact is that for one of the big three branches of ethics, consequentialism, our possessing of free will or not is entirely irrelevant. Doesn't matter. Don't need it. Perfectly content without it. Some people have been arguing this in this very thread even, now explicitly.
like, I'm fine with having an argument on ethics. but that is not the important concern in this debate.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this.
I will say that cosmic determinism is controversial. Maybe all events are locked in by an inexorable causal chain or not. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.
But like I tried to allude to above, cosmic indeterminism doesn't really fill the role we want it to. Maybe quarks or leptons aren't deterministic.Do you want to be at the mercy of truly random subatomic particles? The collapse of probabilistic waves at the quantum level.
Here's the payoff: You are a natural phenomenon. You are as real as Hurricane Andrew or the solar system.
Just because you're beholden to natural phenomena doesn't mean you aren't unique or complex or amazing.
Except if we live in a deterministic universe you are exactly as amazing as say, a stationary rock, or a pile of grass clippings. Everything was destined to be exactly as it is at the moment of creation.
Fortunately, the universe is completely non deterministic. Seriously folks, I feel like we keep on reverting back to flat earth arguments here. Quantum mechanics is at least as proven as say, the earth goes around the sun, and it is fundamental to the way it's maths works that it be random. If it's not random, it has to carry information about the original particle, and if it carries information about the original particle it's non random existence must violate the uncertainty principle or causality.
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
The fact is that for one of the big three branches of ethics, consequentialism, our possessing of free will or not is entirely irrelevant. Doesn't matter. Don't need it. Perfectly content without it. Some people have been arguing this in this very thread even, now explicitly.
like, I'm fine with having an argument on ethics. but that is not the important concern in this debate.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this.
I will say that cosmic determinism is controversial. Maybe all events are locked in by an inexorable causal chain or not. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.
But like I tried to allude to above, cosmic indeterminism doesn't really fill the role we want it to. Maybe quarks or leptons aren't deterministic.Do you want to be at the mercy of truly random subatomic particles? The collapse of probabilistic waves at the quantum level.
Here's the payoff: You are a natural phenomenon. You are as real as Hurricane Andrew or the solar system.
Just because you're beholden to natural phenomena doesn't mean you aren't unique or complex or amazing.
Except if we live in a deterministic universe you are exactly as amazing as say, a stationary rock, or a pile of grass clippings. Everything was destined to be exactly as it is at the moment of creation.
Fortunately, the universe is completely non deterministic. Seriously folks, I feel like we keep on reverting back to flat earth arguments here. Quantum mechanics is at least as proven as say, the earth goes around the sun, and it is fundamental to the way it's maths works that it be random. If it's not random, it has to carry information about the original particle, and if it carries information about the original particle it's non random existence must violate the uncertainty principle or causality.
Okay, so this one possible collapse state of the universe out of (infinitely, technically) many. The set of all possible collapse states at this point in time was predetermined at the start of the universe and this one was fallen into entirely at random.
Not exactly any more spectacular just because you get pedantic about using the math definition of deterministic.
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
The fact is that for one of the big three branches of ethics, consequentialism, our possessing of free will or not is entirely irrelevant. Doesn't matter. Don't need it. Perfectly content without it. Some people have been arguing this in this very thread even, now explicitly.
like, I'm fine with having an argument on ethics. but that is not the important concern in this debate.
Most people are pretty sloppy when they talk about probabilities, myself included. We don't typically explicitly declare the problem space or our presumptions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this.
I will say that cosmic determinism is controversial. Maybe all events are locked in by an inexorable causal chain or not. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.
But like I tried to allude to above, cosmic indeterminism doesn't really fill the role we want it to. Maybe quarks or leptons aren't deterministic.Do you want to be at the mercy of truly random subatomic particles? The collapse of probabilistic waves at the quantum level.
Here's the payoff: You are a natural phenomenon. You are as real as Hurricane Andrew or the solar system.
Just because you're beholden to natural phenomena doesn't mean you aren't unique or complex or amazing.
Except if we live in a deterministic universe you are exactly as amazing as say, a stationary rock, or a pile of grass clippings. Everything was destined to be exactly as it is at the moment of creation.
Fortunately, the universe is completely non deterministic. Seriously folks, I feel like we keep on reverting back to flat earth arguments here. Quantum mechanics is at least as proven as say, the earth goes around the sun, and it is fundamental to the way it's maths works that it be random. If it's not random, it has to carry information about the original particle, and if it carries information about the original particle it's non random existence must violate the uncertainty principle or causality.
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I don't see how that's any less arbitrary. When you have free will, your past no longer has a determined connection to your future, so what use is there to apply consequences to something to begin with?
Who are you quoting, exactly? It's certainly not me.
I'm quoting the central fuckin thesis of determinism
We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening
That's determinism
I'm sure Apo has a better resource, but this will do for the moment: https://www.britannica.com/topic/determinism
"Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. "
Our control is part of the determined path, but the nature of our control is itself determined. It is a description of the process.
So yeah personal responsibility is a lie and no one bears responsibility for their actions.
Unless we're to ignore that and act like free will exists.
Or we just work with the reality that we it's harmful to ignore causality when taking action.
Without judgement what would we do?
We would be forced to look
At ourselves emerged in lost time
Assuming what may be without judgement
Perception would increase a million times
It will not happen no matter what you want. It will happen because you want a certain thing.
As though i had a free will of my own
As though you had the will that you must have.
How so? If free will is real, then the implications is that you are personal responsible for your crime. It is something YOU did. Ergo, justice is punishment centric, for you to atone for your actions.
However, operating under determinism means that there is an understanding that the crime happened for a reason. There is something broken about the person that led to this crime. Justice in this case is rehabilition-based, determining why a person took this action and how it can be corrected.
Either way, what we do know is that our current prison system clearly doesn't work. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, for profit prisons, de facto slavery, rape and violence as a normalized fact of life, all because society doesn't want to help and protect "bad people."
I actually like where you're going in the center of this.
A question about if the fault seemingly cannot be corrected, if its permanently broken? How do we determine if the fault is corrected? As well is it possible that you don't necessarily need any kind of fault correction for certain crimes? Is it possible that simply correcting the context of the person would prevent further crime?
More foundationally how do we determine what is crime? Is it necessary to determine that things are crimes? As you say they happened for a reason. It was always supposed to happen. Why is it a crime? Is there necessarily anything to correct?
(Please note none of this is meant to be an argument about the broader point that our prison system is totally fucked, it'd be pretty hard to argue that one... considering its totally fucked)
And in a deterministic world there is a way to say that you have limited control of your actions.
What does it mean to play a "true part" in something?
Like this keeps feeling now like we’re trying to ascribe will to the universe or the Big Bang, instead of saying “event X was caused by Event W, which We can follow back to being a result of confluences V and U, etc.”
which is also weird because if you break the argument down it feels like saying “you didn’t decide, something decided for you because decision doesn’t really exist.” And I don’t know if that’s just syntax breaking down or what.
Of course you can hold a rapist responsible, especially if "something in their past stunted their development."
If there's a characteristic about a person that makes them predisposed to rape, it behooves us to remove that person from endangering the public until that characteristic can be corrected or contained.
And as long as punishment has a deterrent effect (which it does, at least when used correctly) then it also behooves us to punish rapists.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Why are they responsible for an action at the end of an inevitable causality, and not say the thing that fucked them up, or whatever caused that fucked up thing to happen?
Why can we assign it to just the object at the end of that particular causality and not every object on the way to that causality?
I literally don't understand how, "everything is determined" doesn't indicate "everything is pre determined".
If every state of the universe is the exact and only way it could have occurred then 6 seconds from now can only go one way because when it finally resolves and we can actually perceive it, it was the only way it could have ever happened
What value is there in assigning *sole* responsibility to only part of the problem?
Bolded: No. This isn't operating under determinism. The punishment is just as much pre-determined as the crime. That's what makes the first statement incoherent. In order to act on determinism as a moral thing you have to be not determined. So it doesn't work.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm a consequentialist.
I hold somebody responsible for their undesirable actions if doing so would prevent future undesirable outcomes. "Responsibility" is just a means to an end: a way of diagnosing the proximal cause of an incident, so we can correct that cause and prevent future incidents.
If I could go back in time and stop a rapist from becoming a rapist, I would. But we haven't invented time travel, and stopping more rapes from occurring means correcting and/or containing rapists.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I get kidney stones, which are exacerbated by diet and alcohol use. When I have one, I feel a unique kind of sharp pain in my flank. Now which of the following statements is true?
1) My kidney is responsible for the pain in my flank.
2) A kidney stone is responsible for the pain in my flank.
3) A buildup of uric acid in my body is responsible for the pain in my flank.
4) A diet too heavy in meat and cheese and alcohol
with insufficient vegetables and water is responsible for the pain in my flank.
Answer: they're all true. Which one is most relevant depends on the context of the conversation.
But regardless of all that, the pain isn't going away until I get rid of that stone. I can alter my diet today to prevent future stones, but I can't go back in time to correct a current kidney stone. All I can do is get rid of the fucker.
Human behavior is more complicated and there are a lot more unknowns than the urinary tract, which makes the diagnosis and correction process a lot fuzzier, but the basic mindset to me is the same. Root cause analysis is useful for prevention, but when problems are flaring up in the immediate moment, a more direct response is necessary.
Sometimes that direct response means having a heart to heart talk with your significant other and saying "look, I know nobody ever taught you to restock the icebox after you eat the plums being saved for breakfast, but I'm asking you now to make it a habit."
In more severe cases of misbehavior, the direct response involves handcuffs and jail cells.
I can anticipate a possible retort: we just flush kidney stones down the toilet. Does that mean a determinist framework renders humans just as disposable?
No, not necessarily. There are lots of reasons why we hold human life to be intrinsically valuable, none of which have anything to do with this conversation. Most of us have empathy for other humans, instinctively. We have a social contract, where we all benefit from treating human beings as valuable. Human beings are unassailably unique; we can't help but feel a sense of irreconcilable loss when another human dies (most of the time). Determinism doesn't change any of that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
what no. determinism just says that everything that happens is entirely determined by previously existing causes. it just says everything is cause and effect.
this does not mean we don't have minds, or a self. it does not mean the only valid way to describe the universe is as one dimensional strings, as if any other way is just "illusions" and not real. that the universe is also one dimensional strings does not mean any other way of looking at it is not valid.
Exactly disregard determinism it's useless to an ethical frame.
At best it's a curious idea to note, and then promptly not need to care about.
Why should someone with a severe dopamine deficiency be depressed? Why wouldn't they just cheer up and get over it?
Why are some people homosexual and others heterosexual? Why are some people more intelligent than others? Why are some people passionate while others are apathetic? Why do people like dubstep? Are these things choices?
Do these things have no effect on who someone is or how they think?
I think they do. It seems clear to me that a person's character can be drastically or subtlety altered in accordance with the condition of their grey matter. I don't understand arguments to the contrary. Are you not your brain?
Disregard determinism, acquire currency?
I sympathize with that reaction. I'd just add that free will doesn't really deliver much to ethics, either. At least not in the way I view ethics.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I bet I could come up with some moral framework that does not depend on that. Oh boy it looks like someone already did.
The fact is that for one of the big three branches of ethics, consequentialism, our possessing of free will or not is entirely irrelevant. Doesn't matter. Don't need it. Perfectly content without it. Some people have been arguing this in this very thread even, now explicitly.
like, I'm fine with having an argument on ethics. but that is not the important concern in this debate.
The agent could only perform action A because action A was the only thing that could have happened.
Linguistic confusion: different senses of the word "could."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The agent would have chosen differently if their will was influenced differently than it was. This is what "could" means in this case. This is different from a situation where the agent couldn't have done differently no matter what their will was.
Similar situations will arise in the future. Punishment or praise of those actions will influence their will and the will of others and result in different outcomes than if there was neither punishment nor praise for those actions.
Could X have happened (given different circumstances)? - For example, could Earth have been formed with two moons? Could the Nazis have developed an atom bomb?
Could X have happened (given what we know about the circumstances)? - Could fire be made out of phlogistons? Could Colonel Mustard have killed Mr. Boddy in the Study with a Lead Pipe?
Sometimes we're asking about the typical capabilities of something in typical circumstances: Could my laptop run Grand Theft Auto V?
The ethical "could" is more like: "given what we know about the circumstances, could agent Z do action X instead of action Y?" whereas "could" in the determinism context is more like "if we knew literally everything about all the circumstances, could the circumstances result in agent Z doing action X?"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Ya had me up until defining could in determinism.
Literally just not grokin it like that. I kinda think i might have it but its just not clicking entirely.
Possibly try to resolve it to the original framing of
action A is wrong if and only if there was another action B that the agent could have performed such that, if the agent had performed B instead of A, the consequences would have been better
In some way.
If action B was never actually an option, because A is the deterministic reality, how was B an option?
Is "could" basically meant in a monday morning QB kinda sense. Just an, oh if we changed Q about the circumstances, B would have been the result, we need to make sure Q is changed in the future. Is that kinda where it's trying to get to?
Also none of this is to argue anything I grasp how this is in fact linguistic confusion but the philosophy papers that explain this cost money and this is kind of a distraction thread cause our reality is kinda garbagy right now. I realize I'm literally just not grasping something about what you're saying.
Well, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this.
I will say that cosmic determinism is controversial. Maybe all events are locked in by an inexorable causal chain or not. Anybody who claims to know is lying to you.
But like I tried to allude to above, cosmic indeterminism doesn't really fill the role we want it to. Maybe quarks or leptons aren't deterministic.Do you want to be at the mercy of truly random subatomic particles? The collapse of probabilistic waves at the quantum level.
Here's the payoff: You are a natural phenomenon. You are as real as Hurricane Andrew or the solar system.
Just because you're beholden to natural phenomena doesn't mean you aren't unique or complex or amazing.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
After I was diagnosed with ADD these questions have been rattling around my head non-stop because suddenly much of my behavior and my quirks were now directly traceable to a mental disorder. As a result, the more I think about it, the more I can't escape the conclusion that we don't truly have free will because our behavior and choices are so blatantly tied to the current state of the chemical jello mold floating around in our skulls at the time of the choice. My choices made when I was both on and coming down from the meds I tried out were very different from the choices I make when I'm not on anything. Hell, choices made when we're drunk or high are different from choices made when sober so what's the real us? Is there a real us? Scientific studies have demonstrated that the brain makes its decision about something sub-consciously before we think we consciously make the decision so do we have any actual conscious control over anything?
Personally, I'm leaning towards a hard no. That we don't have a "soul," true free will, or a true consciousness. If we did we wouldn't be susceptible to personality alterations via chemicals, disorders, or brain damage via injury or degradation via age. Our behavior as a species wouldn't be so easily broken down into basic, identifiable drives (i.e. tribalism). We're just as instinct and impulse driven as an insect, we just have a way better developed operating system.
Except, that they d8dnt
Except if we live in a deterministic universe you are exactly as amazing as say, a stationary rock, or a pile of grass clippings. Everything was destined to be exactly as it is at the moment of creation.
Fortunately, the universe is completely non deterministic. Seriously folks, I feel like we keep on reverting back to flat earth arguments here. Quantum mechanics is at least as proven as say, the earth goes around the sun, and it is fundamental to the way it's maths works that it be random. If it's not random, it has to carry information about the original particle, and if it carries information about the original particle it's non random existence must violate the uncertainty principle or causality.
Okay, so this one possible collapse state of the universe out of (infinitely, technically) many. The set of all possible collapse states at this point in time was predetermined at the start of the universe and this one was fallen into entirely at random.
Not exactly any more spectacular just because you get pedantic about using the math definition of deterministic.
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What does "amazing" mean here?
This keeps happening: why do we keep using relative terms as absolutes?