The Democrat Party Hates America

[Alexis Jacobi]

The way I see it, some people can stand the truth. Others can’t—or won’t. And I don’t mean that as a moral jab. I mean it as a temperamental reality. Some minds recoil when the myth dissolves. Others lean in. But truth doesn’t care how it makes us feel—it just is.

When one begins by declaring that what may well be a non-truthful position is in fact a truth — the truth — which the weak-minded, the frightened, simply cannot bear, one is engaging in underhanded argument — pseudo-argument really.

This is its structure. It operates in a circle:

1) I declare that thus-and-such is true.
2) This truth-claim is challenged. There must be reasons:
3) The reasons are: They who challenge me are weak, frightened, steeped in myths, and otherwise benighted. Temperamentally resistant, etc. (Litanies of insult).
4) I declare what is true, however, and I am right.
___________

From where I sit, in two top-notch posts, IC clarified the core grounding of the counter-argument to this strange, totalizing “philosophy”. Credit where credit is due.

Conclusion: those who resist totalizing neo-religious scientistic declarations may well do so for reasons that the totalizer cannot conceive, and refuses to see and to consider.

[Ben JS]

Alexis,

Can you link to the posts you're referencing from IC? (These two top-notch posts)
(If you're saying they've made some credible case against the deterministic position).

I haven't been following, only thing that jumped out to me is that determinism is unfalsifiable -
which I also agree with, and have said many years ago.

Because I think it's unfalsifiable, that you think IC has potentially made a case against it,
is very intriguing to me.

[BigMike]

Alexis,

Can you link to the posts you're referencing from IC? (These two top-notch posts)
(If you're saying they've made some credible case against the deterministic position).

I haven't been following, only thing that jumped out to me is that determinism is unfalsifiable -
which I also agree with, and have said many years ago.

Because I think it's unfalsifiable, that you think IC has potentially made a case against it,
is very intriguing to me.

If someone wants to falsify determinism—not just debate it philosophically, but actually falsify it—they would need to identify a single event that wasn't caused. Not just unexplained, but uncaused. And let’s be clear on what we mean by “event”: an event is a change in something. A change in momentum, energy, charge, spin, angular momentum, baryon or lepton number—something physical and measurable.

The cause of such a change is an interaction. And as far as we know, there are only four fundamental interactions capable of causing changes: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Every event we’ve ever observed, every effect we've ever tracked, is the result of at least one of these four forces acting between two or more entities that possess the quantities being altered.

So if someone claims determinism is unfalsifiable, I’d simply say: then falsify it. Show one event—just one—where a change in a physical quantity happened without any interaction. No exchange, no field, no force, no second object. A change from nothing. A truly causeless effect. That’s what it would take.

And if that ever happens—if we witness energy appear out of nowhere, or charge spontaneously shift without interaction—you won’t just have falsified determinism. You’ll have broken physics. Nobel Prize, front-page news, textbooks rewritten.

Until then? It’s not “unfalsifiable.” It’s just undisproven.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Alexis, can you link to the posts you're referencing from IC? (These two top-notch posts).

1
2

[Ben JS]

Alexis, can you link to the posts you're referencing from IC? (These two top-notch posts).

1
2

That's a second problem with Determinism: its proponents are so propagandized that they don't realize they've adopted an unfalsifiable delusion.

From: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/how-i ... /49077/678
-

I struggle to imagine how one could definitively prove or disprove determinism.
I think it’s unfalsifiable.

Delusion: a persistent false belief

So IC falsely character assassinates determinists by claiming they don't recognize it's unfalsifiable.
I, a determinist, I have evidence I recognized this years ago - thus disproving IC's FALSE claim.

So far we cannot establish whether any other being is conscious.
That does not mean thinking they are conscious is a delusion -
it's an inference based on how we believe our own consciousness emerges;
i.e. based on evidence.

Determinism is an inference based on cause & affect:
that phenomena has a pattern (which conveniently we can predict some of),
which we've repeatedly demonstrated our capacity to predict.

Now claiming there are things that are uncaused because we lack the capacity to predict them,
is a classic 'God of the Gaps' argument: i.e. uncaused stuff exists where science has yet to explain adequately.
'God of the Gaps' is widely considered a logical fallacy.

If a position is unfalsifiable, then no one can prove it's a delusion.
Thus, to declare something unfalsifiable then claim as fact it's a delusion, is a self contradictory.
One can speculate or give their opinion, but that's all it is.

[The second post you quoted restates the premises of the first]

-

So to summarize:

IC made a false claim, proceeded with a logical fallacy, then ended with a contradictory claim.

And this is what you, Alexis, have evaluated as top notch work?

Your judgement is taking a hit here, bud.

EDIT:
Let me pre-empt and say:

Whilst determinism may be unfalsifiable,
the concept of free will can be internally contradictory -
thus falsified by analyzing the propositions against each other.

This has been done many times,
and anyone can search online for these arguments.
I'm not wasting my energy on doing what ought be their homework.

[Darkneos]

That feeling? That heavy, sinking sense that maybe none of this matters, that maybe other people are just machines running on rails with no “inner world”? I promise you—you’re not the first to go there. And you're definitely not alone. But the truth is: that’s not what determinism says. At all.

Determinism doesn’t deny that people have minds. It just says that minds emerge from matter. That consciousness, emotions, empathy—everything you feel inside—is caused by incredibly complex, exquisitely structured physical processes. And that—not some mystical ghost—is what makes them real.

Let me put it this way: does knowing that the sun is a nuclear fusion reactor make its warmth feel any less real on your skin? Of course not. Knowing why something happens doesn’t take away its beauty, or its meaning—it grounds it. Same goes for emotions. For love. For empathy. They're not illusions because they’re caused. They're profound because they arise from billions of years of natural history and neural evolution. That’s not nihilism. That’s a miracle with its feet on the ground.

And other people? They have inner worlds too. Rich ones. Deep ones. Just like you. The fact that those inner worlds are caused—by genes, upbringing, experience—doesn't make them fake. It makes them precious. Because they didn’t have to turn out that way. Every smile, every tear, every act of kindness—that’s real. And it ripples outward, changing the world in ways you might never even see.

You matter. They matter. Not because of some magic soul—but because you are part of a causal web that can change what happens next. That’s not a reason to give up. That’s a reason to care more.

So if you’re feeling that spiral—that sense of being lost in the machinery—just pause. Breathe. You're not a ghost. You're a living, feeling, thinking organism shaped by the universe, yes—but also shaping it, right now, just by being here. That matters. Hugely.

Well, the way I usually interpret that is that it robs the world of "magic" (not literal magic though) and to me knowing how something works and the parts it's made up makes it feel less real, like it's just a machine and nothing else.

Knowing the sun is like that does make it feel less warm under me, same for emotions like love and all that. If it's just chemicals and evolution then they have no real meaning or value, because you could just make them in a lab.

In short it makes everything feel robotic, all the animals and stuff like that, and I guess...makes me care for all of it far less.

LIke this says: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tPqQdLC ... 2ki6sSvAxu

Yeah. I get that. And honestly, that reaction makes sense—especially when the poetic surface of things gets peeled back to reveal something mechanical underneath. It can feel cold. It can feel empty. It can feel like the world just got smaller.

But here’s the thing: the world didn’t get smaller. It got deeper.

The way I see it, some people can stand the truth. Others can’t—or won’t. And I don’t mean that as a moral jab. I mean it as a temperamental reality. Some minds recoil when the myth dissolves. Others lean in. But truth doesn’t care how it makes us feel—it just is.

And what’s wild is this: the "machine" you’re talking about—this universe of atoms and energy, chemistry and neurons—it produced Mozart. It produced laughter. It produced people who cry at sunsets, who rescue animals, who fall in love and write novels and risk everything for people they care about. If that’s “just” machinery, then maybe the word “just” is the problem, not the machinery.

You can say love is made of neurotransmitters and evolved bonding behaviors. Fine. But it still rips your heart open when it’s lost. It still changes lives. You still write songs about it. If you could manufacture it in a lab, would that make it meaningless? Or would that just show you how damn powerful it is—so powerful we want to understand it, recreate it, preserve it?

Meaning doesn’t have to come from mystery. It can come from understanding. From connection. From the realization that, yes, we’re physical systems—but physical systems that care. That ache. That reach for each other, even knowing it’s all temporary.

That’s not less. That’s more.

So the question becomes: do you need “magic” to care? Or can you care even more, knowing how rare and fragile and astonishing this reality actually is?

Well...I get what you're trying to say. But what I think the point being made in the link and in other places I've heard about determinism (or more like physicalism/materialism from what you seem to be saying) is the what you're telling me now the story we put on top of it, not the reality. It's the "higher level model" (per the link) and not the territory.

That machine didn't produce Mozart because Mozart doesn't "Exist", it's just elementary particles and quantum interactions, only a lot of them. The same with laughter, falling in love, sunsets, all of this is "fantasy". In fact a favorite clip of mine makes the point I'm getting at, and other do too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPS5Yw_ ... annel=urza

Anything more than elementary particles is our storytelling at play, so they say (folks like the guy in the link). Those particles and interactions didn't really make anything so much as our storytelling does, the distinctions we draw, and all that.

Love is valuable because people believe it to be a force or something more than mere chemicals, it's why there is so much around it. If it could just be replicated in a lab it would lose value, especially when you consider the big deal we make about it and the people we love. It is powerful but it would be cheapened the same way having something readily available does. You only have to look at modern dating as an example, the plethora of options people have lowers they value and investment they put into dating and people because they can just get another one. You don't even have to go to dating, just look and how people with money behave when they break something, they just got whatever and replace it because they can.

In my mind, it doesn't make things deeper, ironically the more I know about something the less deep it becomes and the more ordinary it gets:

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7u ... EPszhWkvQm
https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7u ... pZH2hgz59x

...Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
—John Keats, Lamia

The depth is in the unknown, the possibilities, the wonder and what could or may be. But once you know then the magic is dispelled, and you can test that psychologically. There is nothing astonishing about the known and well traveled paths, and most determinists I've meet sound the same.

In my case, knowing that love is a chemical made me lose all value for it, because it wasn't some cosmic force with meaning behind it but just a chemical. I'm not even sure I've felt it since realizing that, except for the few moments when I forget that fact. It's hard to look at the natural world, the ocean, the animals, insects, all of it and feel anything when it's just robotic interactions.

I don't really see wasps or butterflies anymore but just collections of elementary particles. The same with people. The feelings I have for things suddenly mean less because it's just a chemical reaction and nothing to do with the thing or person. There is no connection. Love no longer rips my heart out when I remember what it really is. Same with sadness....I mean...it's just a collection of particles and no one is really dying are they?

If the feelings you feel are just chemicals then what's to stop us from making a machine to just pump them into people to achieve the same result as actually doing the thing? I mean...if there is nothing fantastical going on there would be no difference right? Why DO anything when you can get the same chemical rewards from a machine?

https://x.com/Merryweatherey/status/1516836303895240708

(I'm just making a point)

In fact I'd argue that if humanity adopted determinism and reductionism we likely wouldn't have made it to this point in our society. What really did it was our penchant for fantasy and dreaming and magic. Making things more than they are, believing in more than mere reality before us, to believe in impossible things (to quote alice in wonderland). You just have to look at all the art and religion we have for examples at that (I get the point about religion but the point I'm making is that desire for something greater and beyond what's in front of us). Heck, I doubt science would have advanced much without imagination, since that is what drives people to explore things. Asking "what if this or that" or "could we fly" and creating that reality. That sounds like magic to me, as flowery as that might sound.

That said, it's not like I'm arguing against determinism, but when I look at the people who champion it I'm not exactly thrilled about the future of humanity, because what usually follows is obsession with optimization (just look at AI art and how machines are replacing everything human). I also know I can't really deny the results of the science, that would be foolish. But...it's all with a very heavy heart, so heavy it's hard to go on some days. Heck I'm starting to not even regard people as people some days, and the only way to get through is to forget about it all.

I mean...it's as you said about mind. If it's just a passive passenger that does nothing then it is real? If it's all just deterministic factors out of control then can we really say there is a person or being at all? It's just a reaction, a pattern of atoms, physics just being physics and nothing more. It doesn't feel, love, dream, anything at all. I mean if neuroscience is materialistic that means physics is the basis of cognition. There is no one, no human, nobody at the wheel (per the words of people I've heard). What difference is there between you and a mechanical toy?

Maybe it's irrational to believe in magic, I'll admit it. But...the alternative is killing my drive to live, and the people who often champion it don't exactly help in that department.

I'll end with a post made by someone who is also a determinist (and possible materialist)

Finally, worth mentioning is the British biochemist who has demonstrated that philosophy has not been fully divorced from science, Rupert Sheldrake (quoting):

"Here are the 10 core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots,” in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.

Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds."

Now I've gone and depressed myself again...that's why I try to avoid talking about this. It's not that I'm saying it's false, but most days I'm better off forgetting like Hume mentioned.

Someone brought up free will and I'm not gonna get into that one because that really bums me out but here:

Whilst determinism may be unfalsifiable,
the concept of free will can be internally contradictory -
thus falsified by analyzing the propositions against each other.

[Ben JS]

Alexis, can you link to the posts you're referencing from IC? (These two top-notch posts).

1
2

That's a second problem with Determinism: its proponents are so propagandized that they don't realize they've adopted an unfalsifiable delusion.

From: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/how-i ... /49077/678
-

I struggle to imagine how one could definitively prove or disprove determinism.
I think it’s unfalsifiable.

Delusion: a persistent false belief

So IC falsely character assassinates determinists by claiming they don't recognize it's unfalsifiable.
I, a determinist, I have evidence I recognized this years ago - thus disproving IC's FALSE claim.

So far we cannot establish whether any other being is conscious.
That does not mean thinking they are conscious is a delusion -
it's an inference based on how we believe our own consciousness emerges;
i.e. based on evidence.

Determinism is an inference based on cause & affect:
that phenomena has a pattern (which conveniently we can predict some of),
which we've repeatedly demonstrated our capacity to predict.

Now claiming there are things that are uncaused because we lack the capacity to predict them,
is a classic 'God of the Gaps' argument: i.e. uncaused stuff exists where science has yet to explain adequately.
'God of the Gaps' is widely considered a logical fallacy.

If a position is unfalsifiable, then no one can prove it's a delusion.
Thus, to declare something unfalsifiable then claim as fact it's a delusion, is a self contradictory.
One can speculate or give their opinion, but that's all it is.

[The second post you quoted restates the premises of the first]

-

So to summarize:

IC made a false claim, proceeded with a logical fallacy, then ended with a contradictory claim.

And this is what you, Alexis, have evaluated as top notch work?

Your judgement is taking a hit here, bud.

EDIT:
Let me pre-empt and say:

Whilst determinism may be unfalsifiable,
the concept of free will can be internally contradictory -
thus falsified by analyzing the propositions against each other.

This has been done many times,
and anyone can search online for these arguments.
I'm not wasting my energy on doing what ought be their homework.

Oh, I get it.

Alexis was only joking when they said IC's posts were top notch.

hahaha funny joke

[Alexis Jacobi]

Thus, to declare something unfalsifiable then claim as fact it's a delusion, is self contradictory.

One can speculate or give their opinion, but that's all it is.

Myself, the entire “argument” — the back and forth — always ends up in a place that does not serve my purposes, so after a bit the conversation becomes a waste of time.

If for whatever reason you desire to go back and forth over this issue, I say “Enjoy yourself”. What are you after? What is your objective?

I conclude that the entire notion (proposed by hard-determinists) is a mental trap. Call it intuitive sense or call it what you like.

I stick with my initial phrasing: We are largely determined but have access to a decisive capability by which we can introduce new patterns into established lines of pattern. And in my view we can do this because we are parts-and-parcels of a wider, larger Consciousness that can, and does, lend us this power.

Though you are right: I just gave my opinion. It is not “evidence”. But that does not mean that I do not have evidence. My evidence is subjective experience. And I can only communicate it through suggestion.

We who share this sort of view, we “know what we know” because it has been proved to us.

How do you suppose that the large protagonist of hard determinism on this site has proven the truth of his views to himself? Not by lived experience (I submit) but by deductive intellectual (mind) operations.

There is one of the large differences.

[Ben JS]

tl;dr

I didn't ask what your views regarding determinism were.
The only thing I asked was for clarification of your claim regarding IC.
After which, I revealed your demonstrably poor evaluation of IC's post quality.

Let me repeat it for you:

1
2

That's a second problem with Determinism: its proponents are so propagandized that they don't realize they've adopted an unfalsifiable delusion.

From: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/how-i ... /49077/678
-

I struggle to imagine how one could definitively prove or disprove determinism.
I think it’s unfalsifiable.

Delusion: a persistent false belief

So IC falsely character assassinates determinists by claiming they don't recognize it's unfalsifiable.
I, a determinist, I have evidence I recognized this years ago - thus disproving IC's FALSE claim.

So far we cannot establish whether any other being is conscious.
That does not mean thinking they are conscious is a delusion -
it's an inference based on how we believe our own consciousness emerges;
i.e. based on evidence.

Determinism is an inference based on cause & affect:
that phenomena has a pattern (which conveniently we can predict some of),
which we've repeatedly demonstrated our capacity to predict.

Now claiming there are things that are uncaused because we lack the capacity to predict them,
is a classic 'God of the Gaps' argument: i.e. uncaused stuff exists where science has yet to explain adequately.
'God of the Gaps' is widely considered a logical fallacy.

If a position is unfalsifiable, then no one can prove it's a delusion.
Thus, to declare something unfalsifiable then claim as fact it's a delusion, is a self contradictory.
One can speculate or give their opinion, but that's all it is.

[The second post you quoted restates the premises of the first]

-

So to summarize:

IC made a false claim, proceeded with a logical fallacy, then ended with a contradictory claim.

And this is what you, Alexis, have evaluated as top notch work?

Your judgement is taking a hit here, bud.

EDIT:
Let me pre-empt and say:

Whilst determinism may be unfalsifiable,
the concept of free will can be internally contradictory -
thus falsified by analyzing the propositions against each other.

This has been done many times,
and anyone can search online for these arguments.
I'm not wasting my energy on doing what ought be their homework.

Oh, I get it.

Alexis was only joking when they said IC's posts were top notch.

hahaha funny joke

Got ya.

gtg bbl

[Alexis Jacobi]

Have any of the standard medications helped?

[Immanuel Can]

Delusion: a persistent false belief
So IC falsely character assassinates determinists by claiming they don't recognize it's unfalsifiable.
I, a determinist, I have evidence I recognized this years ago - thus disproving IC's FALSE claim.

Then I stand corrected. There are actually some Determinists (at least you) who are now prepared to recognize that their Determinism is unfalsifiable, and hence unscientific, and yet they still claim it's necessary for us to believe it.

So they are even more irrational than the ones that are merely propagandized, and who actually sincerely believe their own codswallop. They know it's not worthy of belief, yet they advocate it anyway.

[Darkneos]

Sorry for the lengthy post but i wanted to get my thoughts across

[seeds]

Sorry for the lengthy post but i wanted to get my thoughts across

Your post was excellent!
_______

[BigMike]

Well, the way I usually interpret that is that it robs the world of "magic" (not literal magic though) and to me knowing how something works and the parts it's made up makes it feel less real, like it's just a machine and nothing else.

Knowing the sun is like that does make it feel less warm under me, same for emotions like love and all that. If it's just chemicals and evolution then they have no real meaning or value, because you could just make them in a lab.

In short it makes everything feel robotic, all the animals and stuff like that, and I guess...makes me care for all of it far less.

LIke this says: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tPqQdLC ... 2ki6sSvAxu

Yeah. I get that. And honestly, that reaction makes sense—especially when the poetic surface of things gets peeled back to reveal something mechanical underneath. It can feel cold. It can feel empty. It can feel like the world just got smaller.

But here’s the thing: the world didn’t get smaller. It got deeper.

The way I see it, some people can stand the truth. Others can’t—or won’t. And I don’t mean that as a moral jab. I mean it as a temperamental reality. Some minds recoil when the myth dissolves. Others lean in. But truth doesn’t care how it makes us feel—it just is.

And what’s wild is this: the "machine" you’re talking about—this universe of atoms and energy, chemistry and neurons—it produced Mozart. It produced laughter. It produced people who cry at sunsets, who rescue animals, who fall in love and write novels and risk everything for people they care about. If that’s “just” machinery, then maybe the word “just” is the problem, not the machinery.

You can say love is made of neurotransmitters and evolved bonding behaviors. Fine. But it still rips your heart open when it’s lost. It still changes lives. You still write songs about it. If you could manufacture it in a lab, would that make it meaningless? Or would that just show you how damn powerful it is—so powerful we want to understand it, recreate it, preserve it?

Meaning doesn’t have to come from mystery. It can come from understanding. From connection. From the realization that, yes, we’re physical systems—but physical systems that care. That ache. That reach for each other, even knowing it’s all temporary.

That’s not less. That’s more.

So the question becomes: do you need “magic” to care? Or can you care even more, knowing how rare and fragile and astonishing this reality actually is?

Well...I get what you're trying to say. But what I think the point being made in the link and in other places I've heard about determinism (or more like physicalism/materialism from what you seem to be saying) is the what you're telling me now the story we put on top of it, not the reality. It's the "higher level model" (per the link) and not the territory.

That machine didn't produce Mozart because Mozart doesn't "Exist", it's just elementary particles and quantum interactions, only a lot of them. The same with laughter, falling in love, sunsets, all of this is "fantasy". In fact a favorite clip of mine makes the point I'm getting at, and other do too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPS5Yw_ ... annel=urza

Anything more than elementary particles is our storytelling at play, so they say (folks like the guy in the link). Those particles and interactions didn't really make anything so much as our storytelling does, the distinctions we draw, and all that.

Love is valuable because people believe it to be a force or something more than mere chemicals, it's why there is so much around it. If it could just be replicated in a lab it would lose value, especially when you consider the big deal we make about it and the people we love. It is powerful but it would be cheapened the same way having something readily available does. You only have to look at modern dating as an example, the plethora of options people have lowers they value and investment they put into dating and people because they can just get another one. You don't even have to go to dating, just look and how people with money behave when they break something, they just got whatever and replace it because they can.

In my mind, it doesn't make things deeper, ironically the more I know about something the less deep it becomes and the more ordinary it gets:

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7u ... EPszhWkvQm
https://www.lesswrong.com/s/6BFkmEgre7u ... pZH2hgz59x

...Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
—John Keats, Lamia

The depth is in the unknown, the possibilities, the wonder and what could or may be. But once you know then the magic is dispelled, and you can test that psychologically. There is nothing astonishing about the known and well traveled paths, and most determinists I've meet sound the same.

In my case, knowing that love is a chemical made me lose all value for it, because it wasn't some cosmic force with meaning behind it but just a chemical. I'm not even sure I've felt it since realizing that, except for the few moments when I forget that fact. It's hard to look at the natural world, the ocean, the animals, insects, all of it and feel anything when it's just robotic interactions.

I don't really see wasps or butterflies anymore but just collections of elementary particles. The same with people. The feelings I have for things suddenly mean less because it's just a chemical reaction and nothing to do with the thing or person. There is no connection. Love no longer rips my heart out when I remember what it really is. Same with sadness....I mean...it's just a collection of particles and no one is really dying are they?

If the feelings you feel are just chemicals then what's to stop us from making a machine to just pump them into people to achieve the same result as actually doing the thing? I mean...if there is nothing fantastical going on there would be no difference right? Why DO anything when you can get the same chemical rewards from a machine?

https://x.com/Merryweatherey/status/1516836303895240708

(I'm just making a point)

In fact I'd argue that if humanity adopted determinism and reductionism we likely wouldn't have made it to this point in our society. What really did it was our penchant for fantasy and dreaming and magic. Making things more than they are, believing in more than mere reality before us, to believe in impossible things (to quote alice in wonderland). You just have to look at all the art and religion we have for examples at that (I get the point about religion but the point I'm making is that desire for something greater and beyond what's in front of us). Heck, I doubt science would have advanced much without imagination, since that is what drives people to explore things. Asking "what if this or that" or "could we fly" and creating that reality. That sounds like magic to me, as flowery as that might sound.

That said, it's not like I'm arguing against determinism, but when I look at the people who champion it I'm not exactly thrilled about the future of humanity, because what usually follows is obsession with optimization (just look at AI art and how machines are replacing everything human). I also know I can't really deny the results of the science, that would be foolish. But...it's all with a very heavy heart, so heavy it's hard to go on some days. Heck I'm starting to not even regard people as people some days, and the only way to get through is to forget about it all.

I mean...it's as you said about mind. If it's just a passive passenger that does nothing then it is real? If it's all just deterministic factors out of control then can we really say there is a person or being at all? It's just a reaction, a pattern of atoms, physics just being physics and nothing more. It doesn't feel, love, dream, anything at all. I mean if neuroscience is materialistic that means physics is the basis of cognition. There is no one, no human, nobody at the wheel (per the words of people I've heard). What difference is there between you and a mechanical toy?

Maybe it's irrational to believe in magic, I'll admit it. But...the alternative is killing my drive to live, and the people who often champion it don't exactly help in that department.

I'll end with a post made by someone who is also a determinist (and possible materialist)

Finally, worth mentioning is the British biochemist who has demonstrated that philosophy has not been fully divorced from science, Rupert Sheldrake (quoting):

"Here are the 10 core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots,” in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.

Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Together, these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds."

Now I've gone and depressed myself again...that's why I try to avoid talking about this. It's not that I'm saying it's false, but most days I'm better off forgetting like Hume mentioned.

Someone brought up free will and I'm not gonna get into that one because that really bums me out but here:

Whilst determinism may be unfalsifiable,
the concept of free will can be internally contradictory -
thus falsified by analyzing the propositions against each other.

I hear you. Really. But here’s the short version:

Yes, under determinism, love is chemicals. But so is music. So is joy. So is the feeling you get when you hold someone’s hand and your heart skips. The fact that it’s physical doesn’t make it meaningless—it makes it real. Not magic, but miraculous in its own right.

The machine did produce Mozart. The same way it produced you. Just because something is made of atoms doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. And yes, you could simulate love in a lab—but that doesn't make the real thing meaningless. It just shows how powerful the structure is.

You can call that a story. Fine. But stories are how we navigate the world. And this one happens to be true.

You don’t need magic to care. You just need honesty, and a little courage.

[Ben JS]

Then I stand corrected.

Whether you admitted it or not.

There are actually some Determinists (at least you) who are now prepared

I am always prepared for truth.
Which is why I noted this before you ever did.
What you've contributed to my understanding, is only understanding of your character.

and yet they still claim it's necessary for us to believe it.

I never claimed this - which is why you're using the sweeping 'they':
to imply I said that which you know I didn't.

===
EDIT:

Sorry for the lengthy post but i wanted to get my thoughts across

Your post was excellent!
_______

In seeds' evaluation.

I call this process guilt by association.

===

Have any of the standard medications helped?

Character assassination and misdirection.
Can't address their demonstrably poor judgement being revealed.

I caught you slipping, sly one.