Determinism

[oi_antz]

Witty, yes. But not true.

Look out! That non-man-made, perfectly smooth, rounded piece of rock which couldn't possibly be ROLLING down hill towards you, and doesn't exist, might crush you...

Cats will never make spears either. But I don't recommend allowing yourself to be trapped between the 4 front, hard, pointy things that are being directed towards your flesh in order to penetrate it and make a hole.

And meanwhile, there are countless things we see in nature that we cannot do.

Unless you can make gravity?

It's a straw-man argument at best.

Can you please confirm to us that you have not considered the potential hypocrisy of this accusation?

Also, can you please confirm that you are suggesting a round rolling rock is equivalent to the human invention of a wheel?

I want to tell you that you seem to be making an absurd argument, and I would like to know why you think it should not be ridiculed.

 

[dlamberth]

When wind carves out rocks, landscapes deserts, shapes forests and their denizens, moves the tide, changes the weather and so-on, isn't it doing what humans still merely aspire-to? Less-still just one single human as you suggest with YOUR breath...which is merely borrowed wind.

Nature is all One. We are nature, nature is not separate from us. The wind is also nature. Even the wind that comes from our breath.

.

 

[Zoness]

If God exist then all things are predetermined since God knows all.

We de facto assume a creator is omniscient but maybe he isn't. But going with the mainstream belief, yes probably.

If God dose not exist then the universe is just a bunch of predetermined billiard balls knocking around in a pattern set since the big bang(maybe even before?).

From what I gather, the universe (like our own atmosphere) is a chaotic, not random, system. Chaotic in that hard-to-predict events can happen within the context of its own constraint. That is, the universe can't "randomly" do something, it has to adhere to the laws of physics; but the things it can do are unreasonably difficult to predict.

Sorry, I wanted to be a pedant about chaos vs randomness.

So how do you come to terms with the fact that you are not in control of your life or even your emotions? If you meditate to feel better then you were predetermined to meditate. If you are depressed and cannot meditate then you are predetermined to not mediate.

I was predetermined to make this post since the Big Bang.

Everything seems rather absurd in that way.

Determism is so depressing but it is probably more likely to be true which makes it even more depressing. I lean more Compatabilist but generally align with deterministic outlooks.

Personally, I try to just ignore it by having hobbies, making friends, doing stuff.

You're right it is all absurd, our whole existence is either pre-programmed or pointless apparently. What a depressing thought.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Well I would say the wind has no will at all so then we have no will.

The wind is not aware of itself. We are.

The wind cannot form desires. We can.

The wind cannot act to fulfill those desires. We can.

This isn't even comparing apples and oranges.

 

[MehGuy]

I also didn't start thinking about free will until I started questioning the existence of God. Eventually I settled in as a compatabilist, someone who thinks that determinism is true but also thinks that free will is a meaningful concept (although the free will that exists is not the same as libertarian free will).

I've been surprised at the number of determinists I've encountered who dislike compatabilism. It really seems that our biggest difference should be one of preferred language, but there seems to be something deeper that I can't quite put my finger on.

The way I see it is this: "I" am a construct comprised of my memories, thoughts, desires, personality traits, consciousness, etc., and when one or more of those things causes me to act in a particular way, "I" am the cause. The fact that all of those things are themselves causally determined by something outside my self is not important. We don't need to work our way back to some sort of "unmoved mover" every time we talk about one thing causing another, so why would it need to be different in this case?

Think of a Rube Goldberg machine. You could look at one action in the middle of the sequence, let's say a marble rolling down a pipe and knocking over a domino. You can say that the marble caused the domino to fall. You can also look at the entire machine as a whole and say the very first move in the sequence is what caused the domino to fall, as it also caused the marble to roll, and whatever took place before that. The very first thing is the cause of the very last thing, but when we're looking just at the scale of the domino and the marble, the movement of the marble causing the movement of the domino is not a trivial thing just because we don't invoke the "ultimate" cause of the sequence.

Similarly, our thoughts and actions could be described in terms of the movements of subatomic particles acting in a causal chain of events going back to the beginning of time, but we don't experience the world on that level. When a tree falls over in a windstorm, we say the wind caused the tree to fall; no one seems to think that we can't make a meaningful comment about causality unless we trace the tree falling back to the Big Bang, so why would it be any different on the level of our minds and our decisions?

Even if we don't bother to trace sequences of actions all the way back to the big bang, and instead focus on the here and now determinism is still going to divorce ourselves from our actions and thoughts.

If something else is determining our thoughts and actions I don't see how they are ours to claim anymore. At least they wouldn't be anymore ours then our hands and feet would be. But those things are ultimately trivial, and don't make up who we actually are.

When you're talking with your friends, you are interacting with a cold lifeless machine that is able to spew out verbal thoughts. The same would have to be said for "us" if you want to even call it "us".

All the art and movies we enjoy are per-determined too. They were not actually designed by a self aware intelligences.

Suddenly life seems to be dark and cold. You wonder how far away life actually is from death.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Even if we don't bother to trace sequences of actions all the way back to the big bang, and instead focus on the here and now determinism is still going to divorce ourselves from our actions and thoughts.

No, it's not. You *are* your actions and your thoughts. How can anything divorce you from them?

If something else is determining our thoughts and actions I don't see how they are ours to claim anymore. At least they wouldn't be anymore ours then our hands and feet would be. But those things are ultimately trivial, and don't make up who we actually are.

Then what does? What would fix this, in your view? That there be some sort of core of our being that can transcend all causality and divorce itself from the impulses of our desires and somehow make decisions? What then would it base decisions on if not arbitrary randomness?

When you're talking with your friends, you are interacting with a cold lifeless machine that is able to spew out verbal thoughts. The same would have to be said for "us" if you want to even call it "us".

Lifeless? What do you think life is? Again, what needs to be true in order to rectify what you see as a problem?

All the art and movies we enjoy are per-determined too. They were not actually designed by a self aware intelligences.

What? Again, what does a "self-aware intelligence" mean to you?

 

[SeventhValley]

To me a true intelligence must be able to choose independently of and be able to influence physical phenomena.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

To me a true intelligence must be able to choose independently of and be able to influence physical phenomena.

I can't even begin to imagine what that would look like.

 

[KCfromNC]

Just because God exists does not mean free will cannot.

Just because God knows all does not mean that we don't have free will.

If the future is fixed enough to be perfectly knowable, it does throw a wrench into the idea that we're free to choose what path to take. A choice with only one possible outcome isn't really one, unless you're into word games.

 

[oi_antz]

If the future is fixed enough to be perfectly knowable, it does throw a wrench into the idea that we're free to choose what path to take. A choice with only one possible outcome isn't really one, unless you're into word games.

Would you say that history is an observation of what has happened?

 

[Johnnz]

Originally Posted by SeventhValley

To me a true intelligence must be able to choose independently of and be able to influence physical phenomena.
​

I can't even begin to imagine what that would look like. __________________

Water into wine, a storm hushed - look at Jesus the perfect man.

John
NZ

 

[KnowtheSilence]

Water into wine, a storm hushed - look at Jesus the perfect man.

John
NZ

 

[bling]

What boggles my mind is how a person can know what God knows, or not.

.

Scripture tells us a lot of what God did know (this is in our time frame), so we can assume he knows other similar things.

 

[bling]

We de facto assume a creator is omniscient but maybe he isn't. But going with the mainstream belief, yes probably.



From what I gather, the universe (like our own atmosphere) is a chaotic, not random, system. Chaotic in that hard-to-predict events can happen within the context of its own constraint. That is, the universe can't "randomly" do something, it has to adhere to the laws of physics; but the things it can do are unreasonably difficult to predict.

Sorry, I wanted to be a pedant about chaos vs randomness.



Determism is so depressing but it is probably more likely to be true which makes it even more depressing. I lean more Compatabilist but generally align with deterministic outlooks.

Personally, I try to just ignore it by having hobbies, making friends, doing stuff.

You're right it is all absurd, our whole existence is either pre-programmed or pointless apparently. What a depressing thought.

If there is a “good” reason for man to have some limited amount of free will that would enable man to be like God himself (having Godly type Love) than out of pure charity a Loving god would miraculously provide man with this limited free will.

You are restricting God to our time and giving God a “future” (time which has not happen yet for Him).

If God is “outside of time”, and experimentally over the last 100 years we have shown time to be relative, then there really is no “future” in God’s time frame to know.

If for a moment assume God instilled within you the ability to truly make one free will choice (something that is truly your choice to make). If you made that choice yesterday you and God would know what that choice was, so does that mean it was not a free will choice, since today you know what choice it was? Now assume the God today sent that historic information back to Himself in your distant past, would that now mean you did not make a free will choice?

God can know everything there is to know throughout earth’s history as history, but God would not know that which cannot be known, so God would not know the free will choice of an individual that will never exist, but as soon as a person will at some time exist God at the beginning of our time historically knows what he did.