Philosophy Now Forum

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 2:00 pm

And let’s talk about your fixation on what is "lost" if determinism is widely accepted.

If, as Mike claims, we're all meat machines, nuthin' is lost, cuz there's nuthin' to lose.

We're, of course, not meat machines. We're all free wills. So if this...

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Nov 29, 2024 6:06 pm(Y)our brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

...becomes the common sentiment what is lost is monumental. Personhood goes extinct. Atrocity ascends.

Kicker is: Mike knows this. His ulterior motive is revealed.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2025 9:34 pmThat is a strongly “compelling” argument.

I get it: you made a pointed funny.

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Nov 29, 2024 6:06 pm(Y)our brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

Your belief is beyond stupid.

If the brain is a "deterministic machine" then it must be computable/programmable.

How does one program the qualia sensation EXPERIENCED when you scratch the back of your hand?

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 2:29 pm But let’s get back to the issue at hand, the one you keep sidestepping. You’ve spent an inordinate amount of time insinuating that my position on determinism serves some nefarious social or political agenda, yet when directly invited to unpack this supposed agenda, to engage in a substantive discussion about responsibility, justice, and morality under determinism, you retreat into vague complaints about my "mega-war" against free will believers.

You are obsessed, Mike. Your obsession distorts your comprehension. At this point I cannot help you to resolve this impasse.

Read what I write more thoroughly. Go back over previous posts (in the first 20 pages).

Your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

This really is a new anthropological doctrine with huge implications. Remember Mike: people read what you write!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 3:50 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 2:29 pm But let’s get back to the issue at hand, the one you keep sidestepping. You’ve spent an inordinate amount of time insinuating that my position on determinism serves some nefarious social or political agenda, yet when directly invited to unpack this supposed agenda, to engage in a substantive discussion about responsibility, justice, and morality under determinism, you retreat into vague complaints about my "mega-war" against free will believers.

You are obsessed, Mike. Your obsession distorts your comprehension. At this point I cannot help you to resolve this impasse.

Read what I write more thoroughly. Go back over previous posts (in the first 20 pages).

You must be exhausted from all that rhetorical footwork—sidestepping, backpedaling, pirouetting away from every direct question as though dodging arrows on the battlefield of your crumbling worldview.

And yet, despite all this elegant evasion, here you are, reduced to the oldest trick in the book: “Go back and read my past posts.” That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? That’s your grand defense? Not an argument, not an explanation, not even a pretense of engagement—just a feeble, desperate attempt to deflect the conversation away from your inability to answer the very questions you yourself implied were at stake.

Let’s not kid ourselves, Alexis. You’re not some noble seeker of truth, unfairly caught in the crossfire of my “obsession.” You’re a man watching the tectonic plates beneath your ideology shift, feeling the tremors of its imminent collapse, and rather than face the eruption head-on, you clutch your crumbling intellectual framework like a lifeline and whimper, “Read the first 20 pages.”

What’s the matter, Alexis? Is it that you lack the cognitive firepower to engage? Or are you just too much of a coward to admit that determinism renders your precious notion of agency meaningless? Either way, I get it. It’s got to be rough realizing that all your poetic rambling about the “metaphysical dream of the world” amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking in the face of cold, hard causality.

But don’t worry—I’ll be here when you finally work up the nerve to engage with the actual argument instead of cowering behind your own past posts like a child hiding behind his mother’s skirt. Until then, keep dancing around the inevitable, Alexis. It’s quite the performance.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:26 pm You’re not some noble seeker of truth

Projection.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:26 pm What’s the matter, Alexis?

It is that I have realized that I am dealing with a man under the influence of and driven by an obsession. An ideological position that has captured him like a psychological neurosis. A man “fighting windmills” on an imagined plane of dire consequence. He can’t cede ground. He cannot listen. He seems in the grip of a fixation with near-religious characteristics.

Does that make sense?

I can share with you that I think that many of the perspectives that many of us form in our present have that obsessive quality or note. (And we need to understand why this is).

We seek confrontation with the contrary perspective in order to enact (play out) what looks like an obsessive fixation.

Hey, you asked!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:44 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:26 pm What’s the matter, Alexis?

It is that I have realized that I am dealing with a man under the influence of and driven by an obsession.

Hey, you asked!

Chesterton called Determinists people who are living "in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea." That's pretty much it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:59 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:44 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:26 pm What’s the matter, Alexis?

It is that I have realized that I am dealing with a man under the influence of and driven by an obsession.

Hey, you asked!

Chesterton called Determinists people who are living "in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea." That's pretty much it.

Living in reality and accepting scientific facts. There have been quite a few scientific discoveries since 1936...

accelafine wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:10 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:59 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:44 pm
It is that I have realized that I am dealing with a man under the influence of and driven by an obsession.

Hey, you asked!

Chesterton called Determinists people who are living "in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea." That's pretty much it.

Living in reality and accepting scientific facts. There have been quite a few scientific discoveries since 1936...

There's nothing even remotely scientific about Determinism. It's utterly unverifiable, and also utterly unfalsifiable, having no possible tests and no empirical evidence at all. Mike ridiculously imagines that the existence of scientific regularities in the physical world can somehow be inductively transferred into giving Determinism the default win, and to "proving" that nothing exists but the physical. But he's just hopelessly bad at logic.

But by bending what you said a hair we come up with an interesting statement:

Determinism is remotely scientific!

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:15 pm

accelafine wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:10 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:59 pm
Chesterton called Determinists people who are living "in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea." That's pretty much it.

Living in reality and accepting scientific facts. There have been quite a few scientific discoveries since 1936...

There's nothing even remotely scientific about Determinism. It's utterly unverifiable, and also utterly unfalsifiable, having no possible tests and no empirical evidence at all. Mike ridiculously imagines that the existence of scientific regularities in the physical world can somehow be inductively transferred into giving Determinism the default win, and to "proving" that nothing exists but the physical. But he's just hopelessly bad at logic.

Do some research. It's not particularly pleasant to understand that everything we do is determined by a chain of events going back billions of years, but that's just the way it is. Get over it. At least you don't have to feel guilty about your own 'impure thoughts' any more.

accelafine wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:26 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:15 pm

accelafine wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:10 pm

Living in reality and accepting scientific facts. There have been quite a few scientific discoveries since 1936...

There's nothing even remotely scientific about Determinism. It's utterly unverifiable, and also utterly unfalsifiable, having no possible tests and no empirical evidence at all. Mike ridiculously imagines that the existence of scientific regularities in the physical world can somehow be inductively transferred into giving Determinism the default win, and to "proving" that nothing exists but the physical. But he's just hopelessly bad at logic.

Do some research.

Great. Point me to the "research" that proves Determinism.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:42 pm

accelafine wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:26 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 11, 2025 5:15 pm
There's nothing even remotely scientific about Determinism. It's utterly unverifiable, and also utterly unfalsifiable, having no possible tests and no empirical evidence at all. Mike ridiculously imagines that the existence of scientific regularities in the physical world can somehow be inductively transferred into giving Determinism the default win, and to "proving" that nothing exists but the physical. But he's just hopelessly bad at logic.

Do some research.

Great. Point me to the "research" that proves Determinism.

I'm not your 'mommy', do it yourself.