It turns out that freely-willed choices are perfectly consistent with determinism: we make choices because of a variety of factors within ourselves, factors that were caused by things outside ourselves (what we're taught, genetics,desires...). — Relativist

how can you call this freely willed, when it's completely determined previously?

Freedom is the lack of confinement. Yet our choices by our will are confined to those factors that you and I both describe and you and I both believe are causing our decisions.

Where is the freedom there, Relativist? The feeling? That's precisely why I called it what I called it: a mirage. It took mankind to realize the proper context of will, DESPITE the illusion we've had about it.

The process of making a choice is entirely yours, and the factors that led you to make that choice were entirely within you. Each of those factors was caused - something caused you to hold a belief, or to have a desire or predilection, but the choice itself was a product of you - just like the Grand Canyon was a product of the Colorado river. — Relativist

This is precisely how I see it, too. And because everything in me was caused, it was caused to be one way only, and these one ways make rise to a will that is predicated.

The choice has been determined, and it was predictable - but only in principle. In principle, the shape of the grand canyon was predictable at the big bang, the shaping process still required a long series of prior steps to get there. — Relativist

This is good enough for me. The predictive factors are so large in numbers, and so diverse, and some are partially, some are totally hidden from humans, and human capacity for combination is small... so all this adds up to my conceding that prediction by humans is not possible.

But it does not deny the principle; and though mere humans can't predict much,the choices we make is still not free. By principle, by logic, by deterministic approach.

Whether humans can do it or not, is not the issue for me. The issue is that will is limited to one choice each time,and the choice will makes is predicated. For me that's where the buck stops.

Mirage?

Compatibilism is the notion that our choices are indeed freely willed, because they are OUR choices: all the factors that influence the choice are internal to ourselves: beliefs, feelings, impulses, etc. — Relativist

Compatibilism is an invention by some peace-maker-to-be, who decided to invent this notion, in order to appease people who would be otherwise on the verge of total ego hull breach if they had to finally concede under tremendous pressure of evidence that there is no free will.

That's right, MrCrowley. I fully support your view.

our internal impulses, desires, etc. are all regulated by outside forces. They are "inside" of ourselves, if you so will, but they themselves have been "put" inside into us.

You feel thirsty, so you drink. But the thirst was a function of your metabolism and lack of imbibing for a span of time.

You feel like loving a partner. But it's not a random, uncaused feeling; it is predicated by your hormone levels (not yours, personally, but anyone's; I'm using the general you) which are predicated by your health, your momentary state predicated by the length of time since the last release of sexual tension, and how your body and metabolic system replaced the necessary enzymes and such.

You feel like arguing with me. You choose compatibilism as your belief. But that had been predicated by your values and your wishes and desires. And by the lack of some other considerations. Your values tell you that you MUST be accountable for your actions. Your wishes tell you that you must FEEL to be in control. You lack the INSIGHT (sorry, not trying to insinuate lack of intelligence or any other similar insults) prevents you from seeing that will is just another deterministic system among all the other systems in the universe.

At the ultimate, there is only one possible outcome for any choice, because the timeline of reality does not allow two different AND concurrent outcomes.

It is hard to conceive that of two or more possible choices to choose from, when you have to choose only one, you'd choose one which is lesser caused than the more caused.

Yes, the choice is ours; but it has been predicated. Whether by internal or outside factors, the choice is always pre-predictable.

Also, not all things that influence your choices are internal. Not that that matters, but still.

Take any example. Describe it to me, and I respond how the choice eventually made was not possible to be different than what it eventually was.

That's good news.

Drinking too much water makes your kidneys (I wrote liver before, but that was wrong... the doctor warned me of kidney failure, not liver failure) work overtime. That's all.

This does not mean that you are at the same position that I was in twenty years ago. Talk to your doctor about it. I am no doctor, and I also don't know how much water you drink. No need to worry. Plus, if your doctor did not warn you, chances are you are okay.

Some of us old folks feel that we make better decisions than we did when we were young, and this is because we know more (and are somewhat less driven by hormones). This too is consistent with a compatibilist account of free will. — Relativist

Quite the contrary. Your (and mine and other old folks') decisions are better because we are predicated differently, and you conveniently for me, described the predictors.

Compatibilism is a mere mirage, a new-age addage to the incompatibility to the truth vs the wishfulness of people.

The choices you make are still YOUR choices, not someone else's.
You could have made a different choice, for example:
had you better understood the consequences
had you placed more weight on the long term vs the short term — Relativist

Therefore my will would have been predicated by a different set of causes. Determinism stands.

My urologist advised me to drink less water. He said I was on the verge of imminent liver failure. I resisted his call, which declared I had been addicted to water. Then my girlfriend at the time I was in love with, said, "Why don't you try?" I gave up drinking copious amounts of water, and for two days i felt constantly thirsty, and the third day I was back to normal with 1/5th of my customary water intake.

Stimulants and downers; they are deceptively attractive to take, except after you develop tolerance and dependence. Please be careful with them stimulants for sleep apnea.

The water-shed on water intake was twenty years ago. For a good ten years I had to consciously control my water intake, because I had (temporarily) lost my natural sense of thirst to depend on when to drink and how much. Much like someone who suffers from bulimia loses his or her sense about how much and when to eat when not splurging/purging. Now I rely on my thirst, and I still drink twice as much as a normal human being.

For God's sake. Everyone does God's work, if you believe in God and all the accouterments around the concept.

Come to think of it, God may have created the world to do his work. Much like people clone themselves and send the clone to their work places, to make the money they live on.

God is either very lazy, or else he is a genius. He McGuivered existence to suit his own comfort needs. There is nothing wrong with that.

I had other interests as well, like helping you with (potential) diabetes, and with weight loss.

Glad you found the love of your life.

How did you get out of paying back the student loans?

How did you get out of continued child support payments to your first wife?

How much is your monthly allowance with the disabiltiy? This is a personal question, and I am curious, but please don't feel compelled to answer. Is it enough to live on? Is your wife working? Is she also on disability?

Have you lost weight? The new generation of Neuroleptics do not promote weight gain.

Do you have diabetes as well (due to rapid weight gain)? If yes, and want to lose, I suggest you take Invokana (on the advice of a physician, not on my advice).

I don't know if you are joking or not. Left handedness has a Latin name "sinister" which in our present day language means dubiously evil. And then you proceed to commit a fallacy of equivocation between two expressions that not even remotely have the same form, by laterally switching bases of words and meanings.

The entire concept you present sounds like a humourless joke to me. I could see the point in your post if it were funny.

Try to work on it some more. This is a good concept to work on. Just don't leave it in its present form.

This future scientist in the Star Wars galaxy could be working on a type of touring machine that creates films that are not full of tripe and flashy stupidity and instead have some meaning for the viewer to chew on and talk about in dinner parties.

This future scientist may be working on an AI package that creates ideas for struggling writers inasmuch as providing them untapped, hitherto completely unused, virgin material they can dip their fingers in and make it moan.

This future scientist could also work on future Law-bending machines. Machines that have been outlawed, because, without using supernatural forces, they create instances where the natural laws of nature are bent, broken or otherwise brutally abused.

I mean, he predicted in his life, pretty accurately, what I will do X years later, without knowing me, my parents or anything about me. He just knew I were to be a human, and that was enough for him to make an exact and precise prediction what I would do today, EDT, at around 11 o'clock or so.

This is wow. I am reeling in the awe of his predictive genius.

topic, it's Wittgenstein's approach to dissolving philosophical problems by saying that language goes on holiday when philosophers fail to understand words in their proper language games. — Marchesk

This is precisely what went on with me then. My language skills do not measure up to the presented topic. I have no clue what universalism is, and much less could know what Wittgenstein said something about a topic which I don't know anything about.

But did that stop me from showing via an empirical example that Wittgenstein was right on the button? No, it did not. My language went on holiday while I read your posts, and failed to understand the words in their proper language games.

What a preciously insidious genius this Wittgenstein guy was.

What I read is that you are saying that people run out of things to learn in a non-infinite time, yet they have to keep on living endlessly.

This causes a problem of not doing any positive learning.

But there is one factor that saves mankind in heaven: forgetfulness. Our brains (or minds, if we are bodiless) has a limited capacity, and HOPEFULLY this limit is smaller than the amount of learnables in the heavenly life. Therefore some things need to be pushed out of knowledge, and hence, never any shortage of "brand new" matrial, or what seems to be like it.

Marchesk
2.6k
I don't understand this. I frankly admit it. What's universalism? Nominalism? Conceptualism? Platonism?
— god must be atheist

The problem of universals. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/

I used it as an example, because it's easy to say how it might be stated as philosophers playing with feces while missing the deeper point it raises.
44 minutes ago ReplyOptions
Marchesk
2.6k
What IS the problem? Shouldn't we spell out in plain, simple language, what the problem is, before attempting to solve it?
— god must be atheist

The NY Times had a good article on this a few years ago: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/ — Marchesk

I am awfully sorry, Marchesk, but in my favourite universe when someone introduces a topic, they describe the situation in their own words, and not simply insert a link to a (probably) very lengthy script.

If you introduce a topic, do that, please, in your own words, and describe the problem or topic in a few (the fewer the better) paragraphs. Linking external documents and demanding we discuss their contents, is not fair on a conversational website, at least that's how I feel.

I mean, it gives me a sense of unbalanced trade-off. We do the reading, we do the debating, and we do all the work, while you simply insert a text written by someone else. Yes, this is my main beef about it: it's not fair to do so.

One note about my post there: I read what is asked and I gave a straight answer. Most people will go into a philosophizing about this or that or the other thing. Most times my sticking to the topic gets drowned in the enthusiastic debate by many others about something completely unrelated.

Old age has its merits, one being a strange sense of discipline one follows.

How do I feel about free will if I had some. or not had any.

- I like that I am responsible for my actions whether there is free will or not.
- I like that nobody ultimately has control. I would like to have control, but I'm happy i have an equal amount to how much everyone else has.
- I like being me. Reap the apparent rewards I've earned. Lack of free will puts a little dumper on that.
- as a function of a deterministic universe, I have this gladness feeling that washes all over me, that everything is all right. Transfering control, and just enjoying the ride. Same if I were religious, or believed in a non-deterministic universe.
- lack of free will, a consideration thereof, never stopped me for enjoying a victory in arguing, or in working out a problem, or winning in chess, etc.
- I enjoy having the views I have, and I stick behind them with conviction. This I enjoy as if it were my own doing. What a rube.
- Generally, I ignore the fact that there is no free will, and let it roll out as it may. I take the rewards I did not earn, I suffer the punishment I did not deserve. But it all congeals, to me it feels right, in an apparent illusion that I seem to be living.

If Wittgenstein is right that a certain use of language is misleading, how did that start? — Valentinus

He had said the opposite?

I burn in shame. Misuse of words is an abuse of language.

Misusing the language in philosophical circles is like scattering scatological fragments in the heating and air conditioning ducts. Like disseminating semen that has gone bad in an artificial inseminating clinic. Like distributing disturbances into disturbed minds. Like handing out pro-abortion propaganda leaflets at a Baptist Barbie-doll Brutally Bruising, Smashing and Shredding Convention. -- Hey. This last one does not apply here.

Interesting mish-mash of trivia. And some deceptively good points.

The best point in your essay is the role of the external support for personal strength. I find that to be your original idea, at least I haven't seen it portrayed like you have. Philosophers find strength in logic. Reason. Common sense.

When you go into the sex trade, I am not sure I can share your sentiments. Domestic violence, etc. That topic deserves a much more in-depth analysis than a simple statement that sex trade practices decrease or diminish brutal abuse.

Philosophers playing with their feces. — Bitter Crank

Shit! Who took my colonoscopy bag? It was here a minute ago.

Is Devans99 what you call a troll? Or is he just an ignorant nincompoop? Not a rhetorical question. He displays characteristics of both.

If it's the latter, then the problem is ordinary language, not philosophy. — Marchesk

Ah! the problem again. What IS the problem?

Here we need to ask ourselves how did philosophy arise? — Marchesk

What is the need? What unfulfilled desire eggs us on ot ask ourselves how philosophy arose? And why precisely here?

So we see that the problem isn't an abuse of language — Marchesk

What IS the problem? Shouldn't we spell out in plain, simple language, what the problem is, before attempting to solve it?

And who is abusing the language? The OP? Nobody else has said anything yet, so he must be referring to himself. And he'd be referring to me too, based on "nobody else said anything", except he'd have had to accuse me proactively, in the opening paragraph, since that came before my post. Verrrry complicated matter.

Take the example of the problem of universals. A philosopher might ask why language is full of universal concepts if the world is full of individuals. This leads to attempts to resolve the paradox such as nominalism, conceptualism, and platonism. But the Wittgenstein approach would be that attempting to answer such questions is pointless. Instead, the question should be dissolved by understanding that universal talk is a generalizing short-cut for having to specify everything about an individual. — Marchesk

I don't understand this. I frankly admit it. What's universalism? Nominalism? Conceptualism? Platonism?

New Age has become Old Age. The trend now is neo-pessimism, and religious stupor.

If I were oppressed, I'd behave oppressedly.

"There can be phenomena without a cause" isn't at all inconsistent with "We never observe phenomena with no cause."If there can be one thing in some far-flung corner of the universe that occurs, just one time, with no cause, then "There can be phenomena without a cause" is true even though "We never observe phenomena with no cause" is also true. — Terrapin Station

So please show me this exception. I have nothing but asked of you for this, and now you lecture me on how one such instance invalidates determinism.

Be my guest. Invalidate determinism. I am all ears. Show me that example.

You are only adding words to this conversation. What you wrote had already been agreed on by many people, including you and me. You don't need to lecture me on that. But if you talk the talk, then walk the walk. Please, for the Nth time, show me that example. Please don't elaborate more on this, because from what I see I know as much as you do, and you know as much as I do. Just show me the instance of no causation. Please. No more lectures. No more philosophizing. Just an example.

↪god must be atheist Well reasoned counter arguments would be nice instead of waffle. — Devans99

Those days are over. A number of us have given you well-reasoned counter arguments. They did not do the trick. Now is the time to waffle, and show our teeth, for you do not belong here.

Terrapin Station, you can prove me wrong just naming one effect that has no cause, and just naming one cause that has no effect.

I did not ask you to disprove me, or to prove that determinism is wrong. But until you establish that it is wrong, I have no reason to believe you.

If you insist that things happen without a cause, show me one. I can show you millions causes that have effect and trillions of effects that have causes. You can't show even one.

So what's so hard about this? You want to exclude the possibility of determinism on an a priori basis? Be my guest. Show me your logical proof that determinism can't exist due to purely logical reasons.

Otherwise please let me be. If you want to believe the impossible, that's your business, and I shan't interfere. But please don't call me out on believing the intuitively reasonable and the empirically not yet disproven.

I second that opinion.

Devans99 has twisted and turned words against all reason, logic, and pure intution. Where he was shown to fail, he said, "well, maybe the human mind is not capable to comprehend this." Well, maybe, but we talk about things we can support, not about things that are far-flung even as fantasies, conjectures or speculations.

Devans99, your theories don't add up, don't measure up, and you are wasting our time and yours on this website. You are not knowledgeable, you deflect criticism by not understanding it, and you speak generally no more than nonsense.

I can't make you disappear, Devans99, but I will encourage those whom I esteem not to engage you, because you don't play the game fairly. By that I mean that you don't adhere to logic, to evidence, even to speculative possibilities. You deny infinity, you insist on start time of the universe... then what happened five minutes before time started? Your theories can be shot down by a five-year-old, and it's only your incredibly huge ego that carries you through these discourses.

You're right, all dominant cultures made a mark on the then known world.