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Where do determinists fall on your self refuting cut off line.
by wddkcs 3y ago
Where do determinists fall on your self refuting cut off line.
- abtinf 3y agoDeterminism is totally incoherent and self-evidently false. There is no evidence for determinism available to you. The very concept of “evidence” requires free will. There are no stupid determinists; it takes a certain level of intelligence to become so disconnected from literal moment-to-moment lived experience. Edit: I erred in saying it is false; that is too generous. It is arbitrary.
- commonlisp94 3y agoI don't think most philosophers would agree with you. One framing of determinism is that you can only choose from the options in your head, weighted by your preferences. Both your preferences and those options were acquired through your experience, so how can choose anything other than what your experience already influenced you to do? It's fine to disagree, but do you find that "incoherent" and "self-evidently false"?
- abtinf 3y agoIf everything is the result of previous factors, and nothing could have turned out differently, what is the point of making any argument about anything at all? You are relying on my free will: that I will focus my mind, read your argument, incorporate my experience, judge its truth using my reasoning faculty, and choose. Without free will, reason is impotent. Philosophers can’t agree or disagree because they have no choice in the matter. Free will is not about being able to choose any random thing at all. That would be like saying I’m not a human because I can’t will myself into becoming a banana peel.
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- drupe 3y ago> The very concept of “evidence” requires free will. Interesting idea, I'm a bit sceptical but would love to learn more about this argument. Where does it come from?
- abtinf 3y agoThe universe exists. It exists outside of our minds. We have the ability to explore and understand it, by choosing to focus our minds and engaging our rational faculty. If we don’t have free will, then we can’t reason. If we can’t reason, then there is no such thing as evidence. To learn more about this approach, see Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” and Peikoff’s “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”.
- wddkcs 3y agoDeterminism is observable on a micro scale- I can tell someone to do something and they do it, or I could predict someones behavior relatively exactly, or I could even control their behavior directly. How then is determinism not translateable to the macro scale?
- abtinf 3y agoThose examples are not typically considered within the scope of the word determinism. Entities act in accordance with their nature. Aspects of a man’s nature of man include consciousness, free will, and the character he cultivates. This doesn’t mean they behave randomly.
- wddkcs 3y agoDeterminism is not typically seen as self defeating either, but your definition seems to ignore that. I cannot imagine a 'free will' that is not founded on randomness, but that may be a personal limit.
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- abtinf 3y agoHere is an approach demonstrating an alternative to randomness, from Peikoff’s “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”: The law of causality affirms a necessary connection between entities and their actions. It does not, however, specify any particular kind of entity or of action. The law does not say that only mechanistic relationships can occur, the kind that apply when one billiard ball strikes another; this is one common form of causation, but it does not preempt the field. Similarly, the law does not say that only choices governed by ideas and values are possible; this, too, is merely a form of causation; it is common but not universal within the realm of consciousness. The law of causality does not inventory the universe; it does not tell us what kinds of entities or actions are possible. It tells us only that whatever entities there are, they act in accordance with their nature, and whatever actions there are, they are performed and determined by the entity which acts. The law of causality by itself, therefore, does not affirm or deny the reality of an irreducible choice. It says only this much: if such a choice does exist, then it, too, as a form of action, is performed and necessitated by an entity of a specific nature. The content of one’s choice could always have gone in the opposite direction; the choice to focus could have been the choice not to focus, and vice versa. But the action itself, the fact of choosing as such, in one direction or the other, is unavoidable. Since man is an entity of a certain kind, since his brain and consciousness possess a certain identity, he must act in a certain way. He must continuously choose between focus and nonfocus. Given a certain kind of cause, in other words, a certain kind of effect must follow. This is not a violation of the law of causality, but an instance of it.