Determinism

[levi501]

If you believe in determinism, how does personal respondibilty come into play, can you blame anyone of crimes?

They have nothing to do with each other.
Society should protect itself against those that harm it.
Why do I act moral? Empathy is a very strong emotion in me, plus I fear the unknown. I won't derail further explaining it.

What the absense of freewill speaks against is revenge... when it serves no other purpose other then revenge. It also speaks against spiritual revenge, or hell. If we have no free will, and a fair and rational god exists then no one would be sent there because what we did on this Earth was ultimately not our fault. And if God is the all-powerful first cause... then it's actually his fault.

 

[Edx]

If you believe in determinism, how does personal respondibilty come into play, can you blame anyone of crimes?

Yes, we have no choice but to act as if we have control over our lives - even if its not true. It just isnt practicle to act from the presumption that we arent responsible.

Ed

 

[Exist]

Yes, we have no choice but to act as if we have control over our lives

See, I think we are responsible.

There is a machine, and something goes wrong, and it kills people, it is responsible for the deaths. You either retain it, do something that makes it quit killing, or you destroy it.

The machine does what it does, just as we do what we do.

We are sentient, so we know that if we kill, others won't like it, and try and stop it. Most of us also have morals, so we have some variables inside us saying that we shouldn't kill.

Gotta go

 

[Edx]

There is a machine, and something goes wrong, and it kills people, it is responsible for the deaths. You either retain it, do something that makes it quit killing, or you destroy it.

Thats a terrible analogy. If you create a machine and it goes wrong and starts killing people, YOU are responsible.

 

[Exist]

I was writing on the fly, as I am now.

Yes, but what if nobody created the machine?

Alright, I really gotta go. I'll try and think of a better way of putting it for when I get back.

 

[MoonlessNight]

The one troubling part about determinism, for at me at least, is that it pretty much forces epiphenomenalism. All thought is just a product of various chemical reactions, and what's more, it is more or less forced. Perhaps it is not strictly deterministic, but at least there is no choice in any matter. So what is our conciousness then? To us it seems like it is our way of viewing and dealing with the world, but what role can it play in our actions? Certainly it cannot have any control over the reactions in our brain, those are fixed by whatever law. Since our conciousness coincides with our decisions, as though we actually made them, it seems like it cannot come before the decisions are made, or else it could not be 100% accurate (i.e. there would be times when our conciousness would think it is "choosing" something but the chemical reactions would result in a different action, so our body would do something. As far as I know this doesn't happen to the average person). So it comes after the reaction, or is a byproduct of it. In either case conciousness is ultimately hollow. At best it is a false explanation for our actions, at worst it is just an interesting phenomenon created by a robotic system that utimately has no value.

 

[jinkazama]

Of course we have free-will, we have free to do whatever we want in phsyical constant environment, why would want a disorder universe , lack of gravity, or running at speed of light, we are living in the best possible of all worlds.

 

[levi501]

If it can, it is random.

Is anything random in the uncaused sense?

 

[FSTDT]

If you believe in determinism, how does personal respondibilty come into play, can you blame anyone of crimes?

Personal responsibility entails two things: (1) that you know what you're doing, and (2) that your intentions and desires played some part in the outcome of your actions.

Both of those are consistent with the laws of cause and effect. And in fact, free will (a denial of cause an effect) is inconsistent with personal responsibility, because if your actions are influenced by what you expect will happen in the future, then they are being determined, they aren't acausal.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

*Ignore - I misread sth*

 

[Lord Emsworth]

If you believe in determinism, how does personal respondibilty come into play, can you blame anyone of crimes?

On the other hand, what do you blame if things are not determined? More to the point, imagine a coin toss. Imagine an ideal coin toss, i.e. both heads and tails could come up. Which will come up is not determined by anything of course (forget reality for a min - I said ideal).

If heads come up, what are you going to blame? If tails comes up what are you going to praise?

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Is anything random in the uncaused sense?

If something occurs and has not been caused to occur, wouldn't that mean it could just as well have not occured. What you eventully get, i.e. X or ~X, depends on chance at best. And that is what I understand as random.

 

[jinkazama]

On the other hand, what do you blame if things are not determined? More to the point, imagine a coin toss. Imagine an ideal coin toss, i.e. both heads and tails could come up. Which will come up is not determined by anything of course (forget reality for a min - I said ideal).

If heads come up, what are you going to blame? If tails comes up what are you going to praise?

If someone murdered your family, are you going to resort to determinism and blame on the killer's environment and family unbringing or do you want that person to be trialed under the law.

 

[levi501]

If someone murdered your family, are you going to resort to determinism and blame on the killer's environment and family unbringing or do you want that person to be trialed under the law.

wow.
Believing in determinism doesn't mean you believe in anarchy.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

If someone murdered your family, are you going to resort to determinism and blame on the killer's environment and family unbringing or do you want that person to be trialed under the law.

1. What people want is pretty irrelevant to what actually is. Neither does what I want necessarily - if at all - have any bearing on how a court as an instrument of society will rule.


2. Having someone trialed, executed, beaten, tormented etc. doesn't make any crimes undone.


3. You fail to grasp why punishment is actually applied:
• It is a means of correction
For example a false parking will be fined. The fine assures that the person who went against the law will be less likely to repeat the infraction.

• It is a means of deterrance of course.
The likelyhood of being fined for a false parking has in itself an influence on individuals

• If a means of removal of hopeless cases.
False parking is perhaps not such a good example. But if for example somebody's behaviour is beyond correction and it is likely that he will continue to infract severly enough, a removal from society altogether may be necessary. IOW prison or even death penalty. In other cases people are just restricted from participating in societal life: for example drinving ban.

All these are compatible with determinism, even in the strictest sense. Some of these reasons actually require determinism.


4. Yes, environment and upbringing do shape people. That is why certain parts of society produce more murderer/robbers/thieves as others.

 

[Lilly of the Valley]

I am a determinist. Every action I take is based upon a previous set of actions and interactions with others and my environment. The complexity of those actions and interactions are so great and incomprehensible that I am left with an illusion of free will.

So you are never making real choices and decisions and everything that happens isn't your responsibilty but that of pretty much nothing since the people that you interacted w/ didn't make choices and such and it is just a pattern where no one is responsible and no one chooses anything because the enviroment determines everything?

 

[Lord Emsworth]

So you are never making real choices and decisions and everything that happens isn't your responsibilty but that of pretty much nothing since the people that you interacted w/ didn't make choices and such and it is just a pattern where no one is responsible and no one chooses anything because the enviroment determines everything?

You actually need determinism/cause-and-effect chains to be able to point to something and say: "That is what is responsible for the mess."

 

[levi501]

So you are never making real choices and decisions and everything that happens isn't your responsibilty but that of pretty much nothing since the people that you interacted w/ didn't make choices and such and it is just a pattern where no one is responsible and no one chooses anything because the enviroment determines everything?

it always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when someone essentially gets it.

 

[Lilly of the Valley]

You actually need determinism/cause-and-effect chains to be able to point to something and say: "That is what is responsible for the mess."

Yes, cause and effect is a part of life......but that doesn't eliminate the fact that we make choices of our own will everyday.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Yes, cause and effect is a part of life......but that doesn't eliminate the fact that we make choices of our own will everyday.

Sure we do. Your will determines the outcome of the decision making process. Your will is determined by a lot of things in you/your environment/the past.