This is patently false. You can't oppose and succeed in defeating the rules of determinism. — god must be atheist

I meant that if I do not resist the rules of determinism, then I will no longer feel like the rules of determinism are subjugating my will. Not that I can go against the rules, but harmonize with them.

If you oppose the rules of determinism, then you are a slave to (i.e. must always obey) the rules of determinism. — god must be atheist

Yes, if the rules of determinism go against my will, I will feel like a slave to them. If I am willing to go along with the rules, then it will feel voluntary.

Also, unclear what you mean, because the word oppose means any one of these three things: successful resistance, or staging an impedance, or protesting against. Which do you mean? — god must be atheist

I simply mean desiring that something not be so. The three options listed come after the initial desire. I see now that oppose may mean more than desiring that something not be so, so I'll drop that word.

What's negative will? How does the love of one's fate free someone from this? — god must be atheist

I think by negative will I mean the same as what I meant by being opposed. A will that stems from having a negative opinion about something. In this case, having a negative opinion about the inevitable. Loving one's fate doesn't free one from one's fate. It frees one from having a negative opinion about one's fate.

This post of yours does not explain itself at all, and it states things that are not intuitive, so you NEED to explain them if you want to make others understand what you mean.

Please also iron out the difficulties in composition that I unfortunately had to point out to you. — god must be atheist

I hope I have done so.

Good luck understanding me. I suspect we are not enough on the same page here! We don't have to continue.

Edit: There are different ways to explore the question.

For example, lets say I am on a trajectory based on a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think I am bound to fail at everything in life, and so this belief self sabotages me. I try hard to push away or suppress this belief that I will inevitably fail, but the harder I try and suppress it, the more strong it gets. Finally, I stop resisting and accept that maybe I am fated to fail, and am ok with it. Then, I start to stop self sabotaging myself and as a result start meeting with "success". I have changed what I BELIEVED by fate was. But all along, it was my fate that I would eventually succeed (if I did in fact succeed...and if fate is real).

I meant that if I do not resist the rules of determinism, then I will no longer feel like the rules of determinism are subjugating my will. Not that I can go against the rules, but harmonize with them. — Yohan

Okay, but nothing can subjugate the will anyway. So whether you go along or not, your will will not be subjugated. And whether you go along or not, your will will be affected by causes.

I hope I have done so. — Yohan

Yes, you explained yourself very well. Thank you very much, I appreciate that.

Although it is difficult to completely disprove determinism, deterministic possibilities like predestination are extremely unlikely. It is a common deterministic belief that everything that exists unfolds in a way that was set in motion by the big bang billions of years ago. If all the natural world consisted of was planets orbiting stars and other junk flying around then that would be a very likely possibility. However, it is hard to understand how something like the coordinated economic activities of large and complex projects that require everything to large scale planning to minute and precise technical movements have been set in motions deterministically by the Big Bang. Although, I can see from some conceptions of determinism that if there are underlying laws of nature, that things could unfold in a rationalistic way in a non-predestined way, given that no foreknowledge existed of the future.

And whether you go along or not, your will will be affected by causes. — god must be atheist

Until causality is proven to be real, I will doubt it is real.

When we watch a movie, nothing we see happen in the movie is caused by what happened just before. The whole movie exists at the same time, but we experience it in a linear sequence.

This may be how time works. All time might exist at once, but we experience it in a linear sequence.

(Edit. A counter argument could be that a movie is created sequentially, and so its still record of a sequential events)

At any rate, I can't see how it can be proven that causality is real. It seems impossible to connect two moments.

This means I don't believe in pre-determination, since pre- signifies that something was determined in the past. Rather, I believe everything is determined NOW. Not that some factor or factors in the past cause or predetermine the future.

Yes, you explained yourself very well. Thank you very much, I appreciate that. — god must be atheist

great

Very interesting.

I think there is no complete free will. Otherwise, you would naturally resort to randomness. Also, if you have an uncertain future goal in mind, what is predetermined IS the pursuit of the goal and avoidance of the path away from the goal. This mentally only has free will in terms of the goal that was set. Because of the uncertain nature of goals, you're back at square one. I suppose if your set a goal to "always be right" it may actually become self-fulfilling if you believe it with certainty in the PRESENTLY unfolding reality.

If the path is always yellow, perhaps you are ironically always choosing unpredictability in the present moment, which I believe is a contradiction.

I don't understand this. It's not the French part I have trouble with. It is the English text that I can't make heads or tails out of.

For instance, I've never encountered an "incredulity fallacy". I am unfamiliar with that concept. Please explain and give a typical, educational example.

How can you commit something from something? You commit things TO, not FROM.

Don't let's? Let's not use unconventional grammar. — god must be atheist

Argument from incredulity/Divine Fallacy

As for bad grammar, mea culpa. It sounded right to me; perchance it's a dialectical variant of "let's not". I dunno.

Thanks for explaining the incredulity fallacy! Much appreciated. As for the rest... all's cool. I mean, all right.

There is a world in which predestination is true & determinism is false, oui? — Agent Smith

I think that in a world where determinism is true, the world's course will be indistinguishable from predestination.

A predestinated world can continue to happen two ways: no causation, in this case it is not determined; and with causative processes, in which case that world's course is determined.

Personally, I like to use the term "fatalism" instead of predetermination, because predetermination sounds too close to determination, and therefore the two similarly-sounding ideas can be mixed up.

The free will-determinism issue is well beyond my ken. I asked around but to my surprise very few are willing to share their findings on the topic; either that or no one knows what it's all about.

Free will vs. determinism

1. Why isn't there even an attempt to prove free will?

2. Can free will be tested for i.e. is it an empirical claim?

3. Is free will unprovable in principle or is it just a case of INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER?

4. Left to the reader as an exercise.

Fee will and determinism are both hard to prove empirically, because of the nature of causation. We can roll two balls and predict which way they will go after colliding with each other, but causation in more complex situations is beyond predictable results.

Consider two EGGS, not balls, that are made of rubber. Or to footballs. (American football ball, not soccer balls.) Humans can't predict their paths if they are bouncing about and colliding with another american football. And they are just slightly different from balls, round balls.

Now imagine two dice. Again, some insist that their rolling is not random, it is predictable, because they are determined. Yet dice games are useful as games of chance, because no human mind can predict the outcome of the roll.

Now take the case of a human. He has a will. What affects the will? Anything that affects his thoughts or his body will affect his will. How can we measure that or how can we even identify the individual causes in the causation process? Humans are much more complex than a dice, and we can't even do this with dice!!!

So this is what stops any attempt of empirically creating a test for free will and/or for determination. We can only theorize that everything happens due to a cause; why would something happen that has no push or cause to happen? But beyond that we are impotent in our thinking to prove causation and prove (or disprove) free will.

The free will-determinism issue is well beyond my ken. — Agent Smith

Then ask a kin who can, in your clan who's got the ken.

Good point. So determinism & unpredictable and therefore empirical testing is not going to help us settle the matter.

However, the dice & balls scenario is actually predictable if we get our hands on all the relevant info, oui monsieur? That means free will can be experimentally tested for - it should manifest as random chaos or something like that in my humble opinion. Kinda like no hidden variables in QM.