Philosophy Now Forum

Grab Determinism by the ear and take it outside.

MUST – STOP – TRUMP

Here’s how …

Just keep those activist judges busy. They have more power than the POTUS.
(Not according to the constitution.)

But they don't have any guns.

Something must be done about these courts. District courts and now international trade courts are starting to issue these nationwide injunctions that are overreaching, unlawful, and politically motivated. Sorry, rulings that dictate to the executive what it can do on foreign and immigration policy are not kosher. What’s next? District courts signing off on troop deployments?
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa ... n-n2657850

Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 1:38 pm

Darkneos wrote: ↑Thu May 29, 2025 10:02 pm

You can't possibly be serious.

Darkneos wrote:Actually under determinism there is no such thing as responsibility for one's actually because technically "you" weren't the one who did it, it was all the factors that made it happen. Again you don't understand determinism or it's implications.

Walker wrote: Tell it to the judge and he may consider that in the sentencing, perhaps in unanticipated ways.

Darkneos wrote:Our current legal system is based on the belief in free will so I'm not sure what your point is there.

Shocking that you don't get the point, although that would explain your simplistic understanding.

- Tell the judge that you are “under” determinism,” and therefore not responsible for what you did.
- He will say no, you did it, so you’re responsible.
- And then you can say judge, you just don’t understand determinism or it’s implications. You may stamp your foot, tell the judge he doesn’t get it, and insist you are not responsible for what you did.
- Then he will say, it’s you who don’t understand the implications, little fella.
- He will say, even though every moment since the beginning of time has led to the dastardly deed that you did, you are responsible for what you did.
- Then you try and plead insanity.

That you don't get this raises serious doubts about your ability to function in the world.

Now, since that's settled ...

To be relevant to Reality and not some abstract theory that exists in a bubble in the mind ... Tell us, how did Jesus know beforehand that Judas had no choice but to betray him? Was it deduction, magic, or did he choose to know what would happen?

(And if you have some lame excuse for not having an answer to that question, that is your responsibility even though you were not present at the event.)

I see now, your responses haven't gotten better since your other replies to me, now I remember you.

There is no point getting through to you, I should learn that by now.

Suffice to say though it doesn't matter what the judge thinks on this as far as the argument goes. Under determinism, responsibility as an idea is incoherent because "you" didn't "do" the thing, other factors made it happen. Blaming you for it would be logically incoherent, like prosecuting a tornado. Again, plenty of determinists wrote on this and I cited one.

But yeah...you're just stupid. Maybe I've been too charitable to people as a whole. So many really don't understand determinism and it's implications, let alone basic reasoning....

Darkneos wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 6:38 pm

You are responsible for the evil you have done, Darkneos, and also your evil intentions.

Your flimsy justifications of an elementary understanding of Determinism, or simply claiming to have made a bad choice, won’t persuade karma to pass you by, although there are plenty in the Democrat Party that Hates America who will give you a pass, some of them judges, especially if you’re an illegal immigrant who jumped the border at The Democrat Party’s invitation.

You can tell karma that you're a Determinist and not responsible for what you did, even though you had to do it, and karma will say: haw haw haw.



The best haw haw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnoNj9OU3_g

Darkneos wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 6:38 pm Suffice to say though it doesn't matter what the judge thinks on this as far as the argument goes.

Maybe you ... and your argument.

(Clean out your ears)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 5:06 am ...physicists can apply their methods to any phenomena they wish; if only to rule out the possibility that the phenomenon in question doesn't lend itself to those methods.

Well, now you're evincing a belief in the total efficacy of physics...that it only has to "rule out the possibility" that various things "don't lend themselves to physical-scientific methods," rather than to face the very real possibility that it can't do any such thing at all.

I wonder whether your frequent misinterpretation is a tactic or a pathology. Same with you putting quotation marks around something I haven't said.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pmGreat. Then please show how you've managed to prove to yourself that physics can exposit EVERYTHING...

I haven't.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pm...even though you admit that things still exist for which we have no good reason to believe physics ever CAN exposit them, since they are the yet-to-be-ruled-out things, so to speak.

Not true. On the contrary, it is you who, for no good reason, insists there are things that physics cannot exposit.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pmHere's one: how do you already know that physics can exposit mind? Or are you admitting that it's yet-to-be-known whether or not physics can do that, in which case, you're just stating a 'bad faith' position, a groundless confidence or vain hopefulness that eventually physics will be able to do that?

All I am saying is that I don't know. Nor do you.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pmThen we can look at morals...and selfhood...and rationality...and science itself...and we'll just see what the basis of this confidence that science can do such work really is.

I suppose if you keep repeating a lie, you will end up believing it.
As I mentioned, physics has played an important role in our understanding of how the brain works. It is conceivable that further research will discover the cerebral origins of any of the things on your list. To be clear though, I am not claiming that it will, only that it might.

Darkneos wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 6:38 pmUnder determinism, responsibility as an idea is incoherent because "you" didn't "do" the thing, other factors made it happen. Blaming you for it would be logically incoherent, like prosecuting a tornado. Again, plenty of determinists wrote on this and I cited one.

- Your statement is incoherent.
- If you did the thing, factors that shaped your doing are the causes for doing it.
- Because you did it, you are responsible for doing it, and your appeal to authority on the grounds that you can’t prosecute a tornado, is also incoherent.
- The court sentences you to contemplation, not further appeals to authority.

In nature:
- A human is a factor in everything it does, says, and thinks.
- A human does, says, and thinks what it must.
- A human has no choice but to do that.
- Everything a human does, a human must do.
- Therefore, the human not responsible for the creation of its body, is responsible for what that body does.
- Humans are responsible for doing what it is, that they have to do.
- Contradictions in nature don't exist.


- If you talk to another person as if you are an oaf, it's because you were caused to do that by biology and the effect of external forces upon that biology. You were caused to think and speak in oafish ways, like a stupid person, and this compelled your need to keep doing it.
- Should you happen to be an oaf, and need to change your ways and acquire couth and sophistication because in the world of grow-ups oafishness isn't working out in terms of meeting your needs, then that need to change your savage ways is a choiceless factor in the shaping of events.
- You don't choose to change. Change is too difficult for people, and they can't choose it. Just look at all the people who choose to stop smoking, or overeating, and cannnot. The illusion of choice makes it too hard.

- Need causes change, not choice.
- Neither does choice cause need, although ...

Invention is the mother of necessity (because of clinging to the new).

-If you did the thing, factors that shaped your doing are the causes for doing it.
- Because you did it, you are responsible for doing it, and your appeal to authority on the grounds that you can’t prosecute a tornado, is also incoherent.

If I'm merely a conduit for broad, amoral, mindless, determining forces then I bear no moral responsibility for what those forces drive me to do.

That we each intuitively understand we are morally responsible for what we do is an evidence we're not just conduits for broad, amoral, mindless determining forces.

Another evidence: we're obsessed with modeling that intuition...over and over, we try to concretize that intuition thru law and regulation and philosophy). We screw it up, of course.

Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:30 pm MUST – STOP – TRUMP

Here’s how …

Just keep those activist judges busy. They have more power than the POTUS.
(Not according to the constitution.)

But they don't have any guns.

Something must be done about these courts. District courts and now international trade courts are starting to issue these nationwide injunctions that are overreaching, unlawful, and politically motivated. Sorry, rulings that dictate to the executive what it can do on foreign and immigration policy are not kosher. What’s next? District courts signing off on troop deployments?
Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa ... n-n2657850

Why are you threatening judges with guns? Are you planning to 86 them? Are you a domestic terrorist?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 12:43 pm Why are you threatening judges with guns? Are you planning to 86 them? Are you a domestic terrorist?

Give years ago, during the Summer of George Floyd, “the people” went on an astounding rampage and “the establishment” stood down. But here is the important part: many Democrats praised this activism and destructive violence. They encouraged it as it was happening.

There, you can see the evidence of and the potential for violence in this nation. I will grant that some of it was anarchic and of a mob-nature. But then, according to numerous writing here, so too are those who “support Trump” part of a mindless mob mentality.

The ransacking of the Capitol, by comparison to the extended violence, looting, social upheaval etc that developed out of the GF Summer was really in another category.

Steve Bannon predicts that the nation is heading to a “Constitutional crisis” because of the Administration’s assault on (as he and they say) the Deep State. It is not an incoherent position.

I do not myself know what to think of the term “activist judges” nor am I adept enough with American politics to understand the profound factionalism in the Establishment. (Like those writing here my viewvis “surface”).

But definitely there is potential for violence. Some have stated we are in the first phases if civil crisis (or civil political war).

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 8:06 am ...putting quotation marks around something I haven't said....

Quotation marks have different uses, in the English language. One is to quote; another is to signify a questionable or imprecise expression, regardless of who says it. If that dual use confuses you, I can use singles for the latter purpose, and doubles for the former. Problem solved.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pmGreat. Then please show how you've managed to prove to yourself that physics can exposit EVERYTHING...

I haven't.

By implication, you have. For unless physics can exposit everything, you'd have to admit that there are (at least possibly) things it cannot. And then you'd be asked to list what those 'questionable' things are.

On the contrary, it is you who, for no good reason, insists there are things that physics cannot exposit.

Then it is you who, by your contradiction, must be insisting there are no such things, even possibly. In which case, my claim that you are implying physics can account for everything would be true. Which way is it, because you can't have both: do you want to give up denying the possibility of such things, or do you want to admit it?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:11 pmHere's one: how do you already know that physics can exposit mind? Or are you admitting that it's yet-to-be-known whether or not physics can do that, in which case, you're just stating a 'bad faith' position, a groundless confidence or vain hopefulness that eventually physics will be able to do that?

All I am saying is that I don't know. Nor do you.

Here's what we both DO know: physics cannot (yet, let us say) do those things. And that also means that, at least for now, you have absolutely no reason to believe physics ever can. To think it will be able to eventually is totally suppositional on your part, and unsupportable by any evidence, and contrary to what you recognize as true of present physics knowledge.

Does that work for you?

As I mentioned, physics has played an important role in our understanding of how the brain works.

Mind. Not brain. Brain is the physical part; mind is what goes on cognitively inside that physical part.

It is conceivable that further research will discover the cerebral origins of any of the things on your list. To be clear though, I am not claiming that it will, only that it might.

That is speculation, by your own account. And since physics has, so far, got absolutely no traction in any of those areas, it's a speculation contrary to present evidence. It's merely a projection of omnipotence onto the human discipline of physics. But it's not an omnipotence that physics, properly understood, now has, or claims or aims to have.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 2:41 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 12:43 pm Why are you threatening judges with guns? Are you planning to 86 them? Are you a domestic terrorist?

Give years ago, during the Summer of George Floyd, “the people” went on an astounding rampage and “the establishment” stood down. But here is the important part: many Democrats praised this activism and destructive violence. They encouraged it as it was happening.

There, you can see the evidence of and the potential for violence in this nation. I will grant that some of it was anarchic and of a mob-nature. But then, according to numerous writing here, so too are those who “support Trump” part of a mindless mob mentality.

The ransacking of the Capitol, by comparison to the extended violence, looting, social upheaval etc that developed out of the GF Summer was really in another category.

Steve Bannon predicts that the nation is heading to a “Constitutional crisis” because of the Administration’s assault on (as he and they say) the Deep State. It is not an incoherent position.

I do not myself know what to think of the term “activist judges” nor am I adept enough with American politics to understand the profound factionalism in the Establishment. (Like those writing here my viewvis “surface”).

But definitely there is potential for violence. Some have stated we are in the first phases if civil crisis (or civil political war).

They are using the term "activist judges" to signify any judge who dares rule in favour of the law rather than the regime. That quote refers to a panel of judges on a specialised international trade court who ruled, in line with the constitution and centuries of law, that the president lacks the authority to apply global sanctions. This is just a matter of legal fact, Trump cannot win this case on the merits, facts or law because all go against him, so he wants to win it by not being held to the law or constrained by balances of power. Like his dictator buddies aren't.

The other "activist judges" have all been simply holding Trump to the law of the land. None of them invented new law or procedure and none of his appeals has ever worked out because of that. The only time new law was created was when his pet supreme court awarded him special magical immunity.

Walker wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:28 pm Grab Determinism by the ear and take it outside.

A good suggestion.

I've been reading a philosopher-theologian lately, a guy named Oliver O'Donovan. And he proposes that the problem with Determinism is it's a category error. It mistakes a situation for zero-sum which is not a zero-sum situation.

In other words, O'Donovan points out that it assumes that if X has influence in a given situation, then Y must have proportionally less influence, because the total influence must be all the same qualitatively, and all of a limited quantity. That there is only a certain quantity of causality in a given situation is, of course, true; but it is not at all true that all contributions to an action are of the same nature or quality; nor is it true that causal agent X, by its action, must necessarily reduce the freedom or agency-contributions of Y.

He points that the right way to think about these things is the paradigm of "co-operation." When two people co-operate, their agency is not reduced by each other, but enhanced. For example, it is within the causal power of Walker to choose to post or not; but it is not within his causal power, but within Philosophy Now's causal power, to say whether or not there will be a PN forum in which he is permitted to do so. That both are working makes possible Walker's free expression of his opinions; and rather than being constricted by PN's involvement, his ability to broadcast those opinions is empowered and extended. There is no conflict between his freedom and PN's. They do different things, but both contributory to an enhanced final result.

Another mistake the Determinist zero-sum paradigm often makes is that of presuming equality between contributing agencies is necessary or desirable. It's neither of those two things. PN is more powerful in the matter of range, and Walker more powerful in determining the specifics of what opinions will be advanced. This is not a problem: in fact, power-inequality in a causal situation is inevitable; no two things are ever exactly the same in that.

Let's take this back to the situation of causality of Walker's behaviour. It may be true, and probably is, that some part of his disposition in a given moment is a product of a variety of causal factors that precede him -- his genetic code, his chemical makeup, his electrical impulses, what he had for breakfast...all might contribute to the opinion he chooses to voice on a given moment -- and all might indeed by influenced by prior causal factors, such as his parentage, his circumstances, the dyes and chemicals in his breakfast, and so on. But does that mean that when the moment of Walker's decision comes, that these things have to be understood as the total and complete explanation for Walker's expressed opinion? And if they were, then what ability would we have left to say, "This is Walker's opinion," rather than, "This is the opinion of a particular coming together of genetics, chemicals, circumstances and a bad breakfast?"

But despite the genetics, the circumstances, the physiology, the electrical signals and whatnot, in a cooperative-causal situation, Walker is the decisive factor. This is Walker's opinion, because Walker has the causal agency of volition. He can resist or even reject some or all of those influences, and thus has input, through his volitional freedom, into the particular result of the causal situation. So the Deterministic-causal factors merely set the conditions within which Walker's volition will contribute to the whole, but do not account exhaustively and completely for that volition, or for the opinion he chooses to post on a given occasion.

If this is right (and I think it's much closer to right than conventional Determinism, by a long shot) we should not be trading off physics against human freedom, as if one automatically cancelled out the other, but rather viewing human freedom and prior factors as mutual contributors to the final action produced...somewhat similar to the way psychologists have almost universally come to accept that both nature and nurture contribute to what we call "personality:" not as adversarial, zero-sum things, but as co-contributors to the final result.

How does that suggestion "grab" ya?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 3:00 pm ...the president lacks the authority to apply global sanctions...

What you call "sanctions" are merely tariffs. They're imposed within, not outside, America.

If that were true, then NO president would have any power to control the economy of his/her own country. And for sure, Dems don't believe that; they believe the president has that authority and much more...if he's a Dem. But none at all, not even the power of, say, securing the borders or issuing executive orders, or reducing the bureaucracy...if he's a Repub.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 3:24 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sat May 31, 2025 3:00 pm ...the president lacks the authority to apply global sanctions...

What you call "sanctions" are merely tariffs. They're imposed within, not outside, America.

If that were true, then NO president would have any power to control the economy of his/her own country. And for sure, Dems don't believe that; they believe the president has that authority and much more...if he's a Dem. But none at all, not even the power of, say, securing the borders or issuing executive orders, or reducing the bureaucracy...if he's a Repub.

My bad, as you have spotted, I did intend tariffs when I wrote sanctions, good spot, thanks.

Naturally you are wrong about the separation of powers though. As I mentioned the other day, uner the US constitution power of the purse is reserved to Congress not the Presidency. This is part of the whole deal wheere the USA doesn't invest the powers of a monarch in any individual irrespective of party affiliation.

Here's a relevant text from the Library of Congress on the matter:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48435

Some useful snippets from it...

Library of Congress wrote: Summary

This report examines Congress's constitutional power over import tariffs, Congress's ability to delegate some of its authority over tariffs to the President within certain limits, the scope of specific authorities Congress has delegated to the President to impose or adjust tariffs, and the ways in which courts have resolved challenges to the President's use of those authorities. The report also provides an overview of some of the legal debates surrounding recent tariff actions by the President.

Library of Congress wrote: The Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce, impose tariffs, and collect revenue. As discussed in this report, Congress has long enacted laws authorizing the President to adjust tariff rates on goods in certain circumstances.

Note the "in certain circumstances" phrasing there. That relates to emergencies, and Trump lost his case because he is trying to claim that any time he uses the word "emergency" there must be one. This is dangerous, as a highly knowledgable man, you know that a leader who finds himself entitled to declare emergencies at a whim in order to seize otherwise withheld powers can become a tyrant rather easily. The founding Fathers certainly did, which is why they wanted those powers kept away from the president in the first place.

Library of Congress wrote: Selected Presidential Authorities to Impose Tariffs

The following section provides a legal overview of six statutory provisions that may authorize the executive branch to impose tariffs under various circumstances.88 The first three provisions in this survey—Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Sections 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974—require a specific federal agency to conduct an investigation and make certain findings before tariffs may be imposed. The other three provisions—Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977—do not contain such requirements.89

And you can see from the above that care has been taken to ensure that the president must justify the use of emergency powers, something which is impossible to balance with the consitently arbitrary nature of the tariffs Trump has been imposing. He makes new numbers up every day, relies on no actual statistical information nor any formal investigations.