Philosophy Now Forum

That was certainly the most mature thing you could have posted

What's magic about it? If "somehow" non-living matter did manage to evolve into living matter here on planet Earth, and then "somehow" evolved further into conscious and then self-conscious matter, human brains do acquire the capacity to opt among different behaviors.

You can't explain what it is, how it works or why determinists don't have it.

Therefore, it appears to be a magical ability.

Mary is then not just another domino toppling over inevitably into the abortion clinic.

Determinists don't claim that she has to end up in the abortion clinic. That's just you and possibly fatalists.

And she's still waiting for you to explain the magic mojo stuff.

I'm just saying that based on your posts, she must be using some magic mojo because otherwise it's impossible to explain your claims.

I'm not saying that this magic mojo actually exists. I think your analysis of the situation is incorrect.

What is moral responsibility and who cares about it?

If somebody comes around and starts beating on you with a baseball bat, you probably don't care if he is morally responsible or not.

You want it to stop and you don't want it to reoccur. People in the community probably don't want it to reoccur.

Which is why the beater is restrained and imprisoned in a jail or a mental hospital.

Jailing stops him and acts as a potential deterrent to others.

Responsibility is more pragmatic than philosophers make it.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:44 pm Responsibility is more pragmatic than philosophers make it.

I agree, it's pretty straight forward. Whether you're a determinist or not, any pro-social person prefers to live in a society where we're protected against anti social behaviours.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:44 pm What is moral responsibility and who cares about it?

If somebody comes around and starts beating on you with a baseball bat, you probably don't care if he is morally responsible or not.

You want it to stop and you don't want it to reoccur. People in the community probably don't want it to reoccur.

Which is why the beater is restrained and imprisoned in a jail or a mental hospital.

Jailing stops him and acts as a potential deterrent to others.

Responsibility is more pragmatic than philosophers make it.

Just to agree and make it more complicated at the same time....

When people dive into words like responsibility philosophically, they have, often without knowing it, very specific assumptions about what truth and communication are. That a true assertion represents reality (correspondence) but there are others: coherence, pragmatic - which sounds like your base - redundancy, and semantic theories That communication contains truths that are sent to the other person and they take the truths out: Reddy's conduit metaphor critique..
https://www.reddyworks.com/the-conduit- ... or-article

So, yes, instead of dealing with something on the ground, they want to rev the whole discussion up into a very abstract one where we endlessly deal with determinism and morals and other tricky issues, when in fact it's not so complicated that this kind of language based trying to fix things is actually an odd, culturally bound and local set of ideas about truth and communication that we need not have.

post deleted.

You are replying to a person, referring to that person as "you", and that person isn't here. You're talking to a person that isn't here.

Why don't you go talk to that person on the forum they made that post on? What do the people on this forum care about some out of context post from another forum? They don't. They don't have a reason to care about these contextless thoughts at all.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:08 pm

What's magic about it? If "somehow" non-living matter did manage to evolve into living matter here on planet Earth, and then "somehow" evolved further into conscious and then self-conscious matter, human brains do acquire the capacity to opt among different behaviors.

You can't explain what it is, how it works or why determinists don't have it.

Therefore, it appears to be a magical ability.

But that's the point. No one seems able to explain it. But here we are. And science is attempting to connect the dots...scientifically. But, to the best of my knowledge, nothing definitive yet. Let alone a way to determine if something claimed to be definitive was only claimed to be because that too is but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

So, sure, why not call it magic?

Mary is then not just another domino toppling over inevitably into the abortion clinic.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:08 pmDeterminists don't claim that she has to end up in the abortion clinic. That's just you and possibly fatalists.

Right, and what is the science behind demonstrating where and when and why determinism ends and fatalism begins in Mary's brain?

"In short, fatalism is the theory that there is some destiny that we cannot avoid, although we are able to take different paths up to this destiny. Determinism, however, is the theory that the entire path of our life is decided by earlier events and actions."

One of many distinctions no doubt.

Anyone here make the attempt to take the theories down off the skyhooks and examine them existentially with a woman struggling with an actual unwanted pregnancy?

And [Mary] is still waiting for you to explain the magic mojo stuff.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:08 pmI'm just saying that based on your posts, she must be using some magic mojo because otherwise it's impossible to explain your claims.

I never said I could explain my claims. Let alone demonstrate them. You must have me confused with someone else.

I'm just interested in hearing arguments that reconcile determinism and moral responsibility.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:08 pmI'm not saying that this magic mojo actually exists. I think your analysis of the situation is incorrect.

Fair enough. Besides, given "the gap" between what I think here and now about Mary's abortion and all that there is to be known about it going back to all that there is to be known about the existence of existence itself, what are the odds that my analysis actually could be correct?

I merely suggest that's applicable to everyone else here too.

I don't understand why you focus so heavily on abortion. That's not a great example of a moral issue. Every time I ejaculate I have millions of abortions and I (or my gf) flush them all down the toilet without a second thought. Who cares if Mary has an abortion or not?

Are you against abortions? Why don't you choose an example that most people will agree is a moral problem?

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:02 am I don't understand why you focus so heavily on abortion. That's not a great example of a moral issue. Every time I ejaculate I have millions of abortions and I (or my gf) flush them all down the toilet without a second thought. Who cares if Mary has an abortion or not?

Are you against abortions? Why don't you choose an example that most people will agree is a moral problem?

No, really, how ridiculous is this?!!

On the other hand, it's not like he could freely opt not to post it.

phyllo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:08 pm

What's magic about it? If "somehow" non-living matter did manage to evolve into living matter here on planet Earth, and then "somehow" evolved further into conscious and then self-conscious matter, human brains do acquire the capacity to opt among different behaviors.

You can't explain what it is, how it works or why determinists don't have it.

Therefore, it appears to be a magical ability.

But that's the point. No one seems able to explain it. But here we are. And science is attempting to connect the dots...scientifically. But, to the best of my knowledge, nothing definitive yet. Let alone a way to determine if something claimed to be definitive was only claimed to be because that too is but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

So, sure, why not call it magic?

You claimed something ("Free will gave Mary the option to not abort Jane") but you provide no reasoning to support the claim.

That's not reasoning. That's not philosophy. That's making up a story.

Right, and what is the science behind demonstrating where and when and why determinism ends and fatalism begins in Mary's brain?

Fatalism begins in Mary's mind when she starts to think that she knows what her fate is and that she can't change it.

We already know the characteristics of determinism and fatalism through observation and reasoning. Science has nothing to do with it.

I never said I could explain my claims. Let alone demonstrate them. You must have me confused with someone else.

If you can't explain why your ideas about Mary's abortion are better than other ideas, then what are you doing here?

I'm just interested in hearing arguments that reconcile determinism and moral responsibility.

You got arguments. And you don't seem to be interested in any of them.

Besides, given "the gap" between what I think here and now about Mary's abortion and all that there is to be known about it going back to all that there is to be known about the existence of existence itself, what are the odds that my analysis actually could be correct?

I merely suggest that's applicable to everyone else here too.

If you have some reasoning to back up your statements and it passes scrutiny, then your odds of being correct increase.

But you don't have anything.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:55 pm

I'm just interested in hearing arguments that reconcile determinism and moral responsibility.

You got arguments. And you don't seem to be interested in any of them.

Man has pretty much explicitly refused to listen to anybody's actual reasoning. He doesn't want to hear, he wants to be heard.

I can relate to that, we all want a voice, a lot of us are on these forums because we want to share our ideas. But when you say you want to hear another idea, and you co-opt that as an opportunity to speak over the person you said you wanted to hear... that's poopoo.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:03 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:55 pm

I'm just interested in hearing arguments that reconcile determinism and moral responsibility.

You got arguments. And you don't seem to be interested in any of them.

Man has pretty much explicitly refused to listen to anybody's actual reasoning. He doesn't want to hear, he wants to be heard.

I can relate to that, we all want a voice, a lot of us are on these forums because we want to share our ideas. But when you say you want to hear another idea, and you co-opt that as an opportunity to speak over the person you said you wanted to hear... that's poopoo.

You can just put it out there if you want.

Might be interesting for someone besides Biggus.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:41 pm You can just put it out there if you want.

Might be interesting for someone besides Biggus.

There's so many different paths to go down, to talk about. It's actually quite interesting, really.

Here's a rundown of some of the different paths of the conversation:

1. Randomness as a source of freedom is not satisfactory
2. What purpose does the concept of moral responsibility have at all? And would a society full of rational, pro-social determinists be able to make use of that concept (or an effectively identical one)?
3. Different approaches to "the feeling of having free will" or "the feeling that I could have done otherwise" - are those feelings actually contrary to a deterministic model? I think there's a case to be made that they aren't.

I don't really know where to start, and I don't really feel like ranting about it to myself haha.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:29 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:41 pm You can just put it out there if you want.

Might be interesting for someone besides Biggus.

There's so many different paths to go down, to talk about. It's actually quite interesting, really.

Here's a rundown of some of the different paths of the conversation:

1. Randomness as a source of freedom is not satisfactory
2. What purpose does the concept of moral responsibility have at all? And would a society full of rational, pro-social determinists be able to make use of that concept (or an effectively identical one)?
3. Different approaches to "the feeling of having free will" or "the feeling that I could have done otherwise" - are those feelings actually contrary to a deterministic model? I think there's a case to be made that they aren't.

I don't really know where to start, and I don't really feel like ranting about it to myself haha.

Clarifying what people mean by "moral responsibility" and how it fits in with free-will and determinism is probably your best option.

As I said before, "randomness" never seems go anywhere.

And "feelings" are probably too vague and subjective to produce an interesting discussion.