I would think that for a hard determinist, there would be no question about how to live your life. You’ll just live it however you live it, because it’s not like you have a choice.

Alternative, maybe determinism doesn’t exclude the possibility of choice, but if you agree then you’re not a hard determinist, you’re some variety of compatibilist.

Start by making strict delineations between terms like ‘fatalism,’ ‘determinism’ (in all its variegated guises), and ‘compatibilism’ (in all its variegated guises). The tread VERY carefully around the use of loaded terms like ‘free-will,’ ‘choice,’ ‘probability,’ ‘chance,’ and ‘entropy’.

It’s a frantically difficult topic to deal with as most readers will come at you with a good amount of vested interest in one, or more, particular areas. A historic account of how these thoughts have developed would be a safe approach I feel.

I’ve read and listen to a number of fascinating lectures and books on the topic. For me the case seems pretty clear it’s hard determinism. But I’m at a stage where I don’t yet know how to really integrate that with my daily life. So for now I live the illusion of free will and keep going along making the best decisions I can. I don’t like living in an Illusion so I’ll keep looking for a reasonable strategy. My search has brought me to this forum seeing if there are kindred souls :)

I reckon you’d be better off looking more into the neuroscience of consciousness than focusing primarily on philosophical meanderings.

Within the field there are various tangental and aligned topics that tilt in many directions including determinism, reductionism, functionalism, phenomenology, and various other areas. It can be fun trying to pick out the ideas each present and which direction their personal views tend to be directed.

Anyway, I have a good question for you ...

If you determinism is correct (in the fatalistic sense you seem to have displayed) then it makes no difference what you do as it’s already decided upon (effectively it’s already ‘happened’). On the other hand, if you are actually wrong about determinism, yet believe you have no ‘choice’ then you’re living a delusional life under the false belief that you have no real say in anything that happens to you.

The fatalistic attitude is a useful one for when we’re overwhelmed in life. It’s always easier to blame the world than consider that our actions (which could’ve been made differently) may be the very reason we’re in the current quagmire we happen to find ourselves - even then the common response is to lay the fault at someone’s door if ‘fate’ is a no goer!

As we’re effectively limited creatures in terms of our understanding of the environment we find ourselves in there is a pretty good argument to be made for EVERY position in terms of our attitude towards our effectiveness. Sometimes it pays to be fatalistic, and others it pays to assume we much more capable than we truly are in terms of shaping our paths.

Adhering to either without question for prolonged periods of time reduces our capacity to explore and test ourselves - maybe that too is ‘better’ sometimes in certain circumstances. The crux is the ethic. Your ethic orientation is ‘determined’ by your attitude toward self-reliance and your sense of ‘free-will’. Even Dennett wouldn’t suggest that his sense of ‘hard determinism’ means he lacks responsibility in any ethical sense.

Dennett is famously not a hard determinist but a compatibilist. That's the whole point of "Elbow Room".

Ethically, yes. In terms of the physical world he is more of a hard-determinism with leeway given to quantum weirdness.

That is nothing extraordinary given that most scientists wouldn’t claim that a deterministic world means we can, or should, act as if we have no choice. That is just one kind of compatibilist position that has, as far as I can see, very dubious reasoning.

The position I put forward is merely that if it is our choice then choosing not to choose - under a false assumption - is pretty silly even though some could argue that it is more comforting (which I would argue against quite strongly).

The key to being a hard determinist is to think of choosing as like a chesscomputer calculating a move in a forced way. And to avoid spontaneous expression of emotion with free will, subjective issues should be explained in terms of uniqueness, or complexity.

But experimenting with your life is a bad idea, causing problems for you and other people. You should investigate the knowledge / logic inherent in common discourse, to find out what your actual practical position is. And then from there you can bargain towards a slightly different position. And basically it is impossible to develop a discourse based on hard determinism. You can only hope to cheat and lie your way to an idea where the role of emotions in people's lives is strongly reduced.

The "hard" in "hard determinism" signals that it is a view that holds determinism to be both true and incompatible with free will. The hard determinist definitionally thinks that nobody has any meaningful choice. If someone thinks that determinism is true, but that people still have a meaningful choice, that is definitionally not hard determinism, even though it is still a deterministic worldview. People used to call it "soft determinism", but nowadays that is just subsumed under "compatibilism".

And Dennett uses a very particular definition of ‘free will’ to frame his position as ‘compatibilist’.

That was the reason I stated that such terms need to be put forward with great care.

His position is based on determinism evolutionary processes not some inherent ‘choice’. The issue people have is they believe they could’ve done otherwise where Dennett would say they couldn’t. In that sense he is a hard-determinist and I don’t much care if he chooses to label himself otherwise.

Nevertheless from an ethical position he acts as if he has ‘free will’ in the sense that he could’ve done otherwise even though he doesn’t conclude that he could have. Dennett doesn’t believe the physical laws of nature could’ve been different - quantum weirdness is his ‘get out of jail free’ card though.

I think this is a pretty decent summation of his thoughts regarding his view of ‘free will’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpgCYPqPpnQ

I think I recall watching a lecture where he made a distinction between ‘choice’ and ‘free will’. Stating that we don’t have ‘free will’ (in the sense highlighted above) but we still have ‘choice’ - overtime I believe he switched to saying the ‘choice’ was a kind of ‘free will’.

Again, ethically it is perfectly sane to assume free will as a given - as in ‘I could’ve done otherwise’. To you couldn’t have done otherwise is not the same thing as believing (in a scientifically causal sense) that you had no choice in the matter.

Then there is the case of the phenomenological view of ‘free will’. Posing the question of what determines our course through time frames the idea of ‘free will’ with a particular gravitas - whether it warrants any reasonable degree of our attention is neither here nor there as we’re curious idiots so that it isn’t really surprising that we cling to questions that invest or divest us of a sense of worth/purpose (in terms of the possession of our actions and sense of authorship in general).

Maybe I misunderstood Dennett? If so please correct.

My understanding of choice under determinism is that though the choice is determined in advance, it still has to be made. And to make the choice involves not knowing in advance and choosing as if one is free to choose. So how one lives is exactly the same as one would live under indeterminism, one weighs up possibilities and makes choices, because that process is part of the predetermined mechanism that determines the choices one makes. The truth or falsity of determinism, nor one's belief or unbelief actually makes no difference to how one lives. As indeed, how could it, if determinism is true.

I find I have firmly landed as a hard determinist. — Brook Norton

Why?

Why hasn't the existence/nonexistence of free will been proven? This is a question I've asked many times and no one till date has fielded a satisfactory answer. Care to have a go at it?

The problem, as I see it, is that if there's nothing in the way we operate (specifically the way we make choices) that can aid us in knowing whether we have free will or not then it implies that our behavior is compatible with both the existence and the nonexistence of free will. Isn't that why we don't know the truth about free will? If that's the case then how did you come to believe in hard determinism? It seems to be an open question, perhaps even undecidable.

our behavior is compatible with both the existence and the nonexistence of free will — TheMadFool

That suggests that that notion of “free will” is not a useful one, and probably not what ordinary people mean, what the term was coined to refer to. Look instead to paradigmatic cases where ordinary people say something was or wasn’t done of someone’s free will, and figure out what’s different between those cases. I guarantee it’s not whether or not the universe was deterministic, and consequently ordinary people don’t really mean “free from determinism” when they say “free will” — and any sense of “free will” that is taken to mean that surely is irrelevant to actual human life.

Is it possible that this psychological response to the edict of hard-determinism is an argument against that hypothesis?

Maybe. By posting here and reading the responses. You have been predetermined to now live as a non-determinalist. Determinalistically speaking of course. :wink:

That suggests that that notion of “free will” is not a useful one, and probably not what ordinary people mean, what the term was coined to refer to. Look instead to paradigmatic cases where ordinary people say something was or wasn’t done of someone’s free will, and figure out what’s different between those cases. I guarantee it’s not whether or not the universe was deterministic, and consequently ordinary people don’t really mean “free from determinism” when they say “free will” — and any sense of “free will” that is taken to mean that surely is irrelevant to actual human life. — Pfhorrest

That makes you a compatibilist. Can you tell me how that's possible?

Having gone through a journey of discovery, I find I have firmly landed as a hard determinist. — Brook Norton

From online:
"Hard Determinism is the theory that human behaviour and actions are wholly determined by external factors, and therefore humans do not have genuine free will or ethical accountability."

"Firm landing" - whatever that means - by what arguments or lack of same did you came to land "firmly"?

That makes you a compatibilist. Can you tell me how that's possible? — TheMadFool

I think I just did. If “free will” doesn’t mean “free from determinism”, then determinism can be true and people can still have free will. Basically, the question of whether or not we are determined is a different question from whether or not we have free will, so their answers don’t have to correlate any specific way.

determinism can be true and people can still have free will — Pfhorrest

How?

Determinism: everything, including our decisions, is an effect of prior states.

Free will: Our decisions are not effects of prior states.

You are defining “free will” as freedom from determinism. If you don’t define it that way, you don’t have that problem.

The real question determinists or compatibilists should ask themselves is, what they are going to do with emotion, and subjective opinion (like subjective opinion that something is beautiful)

Because as I see it. in determinism everything is factual. All the causes, all the effects, they are all factual matters.

While with incompatibilist free will, then you have the agency of the choice as inherently subjective, validating the idea of emotions, and the concept of subjective opinion.

And just saying you support emotions and subjective opinion is not sufficient. You must show that the logic of determinism supports the idea of emotions, and the concept of subjective opinion.

Because as I see it. in determinism everything is factual. All the causes, all the effects, they are all factual matters.

While with incompatibilist free will, then you have the agency of the choice as inherently subjective, validating the idea of emotions, and the concept of subjective opinion. — Syamsu

Isn't the whole point about what defines the subject in the first place, mind or matter? Why should intrinsic properties of matter constituting a self be something alien to said self? I do not get it.

But I am having a heck of a time finding any writing that addressed how we should live our mental lives as a hard determinist. — Brook Norton

Don't think about it so much? Just a, um, thought.

Because you require 2 fundamental categories to validate both concepts of fact and opinion, each in their own right. You have 1 "category" of material, then you only have validated fact.

Then you will want to cram opinion into the material and fact category. Then facts=opinions.

Isn't this readily solved by dialectic materialism?

I don't know. Communists have emotions? Ninotschka (from that movie about communism)? It seems to be based on systematically replacing emotions with the scientific socialist formula.

I don't know. Communists have emotions? Ninotschka (from that movie about communism)? It seems to be based on systematically replacing emotions with the scientific socialist formula. — Syamsu

Sure. But there is some epistemology also.
See http://marxistphilosophy.org/stalin1938.pdf

Yes they try to cram subjectivity in some arbitrary place, after first establishing objectivity, fact, science, material.

I guess one could say, Subjectivity is objective.

Good luck if you ever find yourself before the court trying to convince a judge that you can't be held responsible for your actions because of hard determinism. Too many philosophers have been (unfairly?) imprisoned already.