Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:47 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Oct 07, 2022 3:38 pm
Well, B.'s channelling a kind of Determinism there. "All my ideas come from others," she says. Well, where do "others" ideas come from? Still "others"? Where do the
original ideas come from, then? At some point, we have to think somebody thought of something for the first time. Not everybody is a follower. Not everbody even can be. Somebody had to come first.
I am a determinist, Immanuel, in the sense that every event was, is, and shall be a necessary event, world without end ,Amen.
The "somebody" that has to "come first" did not come first in time, but is the
ever present ground of being, which you call God and I call Nature.
Well, let's see how that explanation would go.
In the beginning was Nature, and Nature taught the first person the "idea" that he/she would launch out, that "others" would also pass on, and Belinda would eventually believe...
How did "Nature" teach this alleged "first person" the "idea" that he/she was going to become the conduit of? Tell me the specifics of that.
You are correct about Sartre's existentialism.This is why I who am a determinist have to live as if am free to choose and take responsibility for my decisions. After all, determinism does not imply that I know the causes everything. Far from it!
Nobody suggested otherwise. What you do or do not know is, under Determinism, utterly irrelevant. Your "knowing" doesn't change any action.
What this means for me in everyday life is I choose...
No, it means you
do not "choose." Rather, you only
are compelled by the chain of cause-and-effect in exactly the only way you ever could be.
...and take responsibility for my choices...
No, you cannot.
For you are not "responsible," and not "response-
able" at all. You had no choice. You did not respond. And there is no agency called "you" to have done it. Determinism means that Belinda is a dumb terminal on a chain of cause-and-effect that makes her into whatever she is. Period.
...If someone else's belief seems to me to be immoral or incorrect...
It cannot be. Not ever. It can only be whatever cause-and-effect fated it to be, which is neither wrong nor right, but just IS.
...in conscience is what we all ought to do.
No, there are no "oughts" in Determinism. There are only the "is's". Whatever the pedophile did, that's what he had to do; and it's nonsense, then, to say he "ought not" to have acted like a pedophile. Belinda was predetermined to be a non-pedo. He was predetermined by forces utterly outside his control, the forces of cause-and-effect, to be a pedophile. He never had a choice. And neither did Belinda.
...a determinist will sort of be like "Sorry but your behaviour and lack of contrition is too dangerous for us to tolerate so we must lock you up ."
The Determinist has no right or legitimacy in doing so. He/she only did what he/she could not help doing. And he/she did not choose, believe or act in any way but the way he/she was fated to do.
And there is no such thing as morality, anyway. There is only the almighty "is."
