iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 10:34 pm
...if you start with the assumption that scientific evidence itself [or the lack thereof] is but an inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possibly reality in the only possible world, the "whole view" is too. As is truth. If everything that scientists [and you and I] think, feel, say and do are just so many dominoes set up by whatever brought into existence the laws of matter themselves, then, if it's composed of matter, nothing is excluded. Not even the human brain. We just don't fully understand how lifeless matter could have possibly evolved into living matter evolving into us.
Right.
So "science" means nothing more than "whatever the physical-material causes produced." Reason, judgment, consciousness, logic, recognition of evidence, and, as you say, truth itself, are all just "an accident of physical-material causes." But the problem, then, is we have no justification in believing ANY of them.
Why should we believe the accidental byproducts of an indifferent universe? On what basis should we even believe they're related to truth?
Why should we trust anything our own brains seem to "cough up," in this unguided, uncaring process of physical-material causes bashing into each other?
I'm reminded of Arnold's line about the world being nothing more than
"...ignorant armies clash[ing] by night." According to Determinism, the "night" is so total that there are no "armies" or agencies in the entire world that are not completely "ignorant."
And, here, don't you come back [compelled or not] to God?
You have to, I think.
That is, unless one is willing to settle into Determinism and truly disbelieve all the offerings of one's own mind. The intelligibility of the universe and even of one's self must be nothing but an illusion, if all we have here is the collision of physical-material accidents.
But this brings us back to the problem I emphasized at the end of my last message, too.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:59 pm So let me put the question bluntly:
If free will is an illusion, and Determinism is true, then how is it possible that 100% of all people who have ever lived have lived on the basis of their belief that free will is true, and 100% of the Determinists have been unable to live, even for a short time, as if their Determinism were true?
I'm asking for your empirical-sociological explanation of that observable fact.
And your answer was as follows:
From my frame of mind, you want an answer to your questions...all the while presuming that your questions and your answers really are the default here in these exchanges.
To which I have to say, no, not at all. I chose my wording very carefully.
I require no presumption on your part: just an observation we all can recognize, and which you cannot possibly avoid making too, if you're looking at the situation at all. I'm asking you how -- not from my perspective or anyone else's, but from a purely observational standpoint -- you can account for this fact. That's all.
Not only that but presuming that your questions and your answers are opted for freely by you because you don't live as though determinism were true. As though that "proves" that determinism itself is false.
No, I'm not making any positive claim for my own case here. I'm just asking how you, working as a Determinist, explain that observable fact to yourself.
I'll still hope for your answer, if I may. But meanwhile, I'll respond further.
Okay, but how about the teleological component here? Do you link that as well to what you believe about...God?
Well, you're assuming there IS a "teleological component" in reality, and while I agree there is, I have to (in fairness to the other view) suggest that it's possible to think there's not. Certainly, if Determinism is true, then we cannot expect that a physical-material causality would have some "objective" in mind in "creating" a universe and setting it on some "trajectory" toward a "goal." All that gets really implausible if Determinism were true.
But I do agree that if we want to believe there IS some teleological direction to the universe -- even if all we believe it actually is, is something like "higher evolution," or "spiritual unity," or some other such vague pseudo-goal -- we are driven back to thinking about a deliberate Creation.
For teleology is a
purposive attribution. And how can a completely impersonal, non-conscious, non-intending universe have any "purpose' in existing?
All the things "we don't know we don't know" yet. Or is that just a trivial matter to you?
No, it doesn't. But it does seem irrelevant to the question.
For there are surely billions of things we do NOT know. And about them, we can say nothing. But there are also things we do think we KNOW. And it's only about those I'm inquiring.
Remember the cup and the Atlantic Ocean? I'm not asking you to account for the vastness of the Atlantic: I'm just asking you about the cup of water you have in your hand.
What's in that cup? One thing is the observation in red above. You know that's true. Another is, you say, that there seems to be "teleology." Can't I ask you about how that seeming seems to you? What about your own conviction that it adds up to some kind of nihilism? Can't we discuss what part of the water in your cup helps you arrive at that conclusion?
To be overwhelmed with the "unknowns" seems to me no more than a form of mental paralysis, at best; or, in some cases, perhaps, just an evasion of having to think precisely. The cup remains in the hand. There is water in that cup. It came from the vast Atlantic. Let's talk about the water-in-hand, and let the Atlantic roll on however it may, so that we may perhaps add a little more water to our cups.
To me it's somewhat analogous to reading the first few verses of Genesis and then attempting to explain Christianity.
That would actually be a pretty good way to start. For the whole Christian narrative is actually buried in the first three chapters of Genesis. But one doesn't see it until one looks back.
I could make that case for you, but it's not the topic here, and I don't want to sidetrack us.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 10:07 pm You can't believe in "demonstrable proof" if you're a Determinist.
Instead, everything is just a cause-effect relation. Belief in proof isn't real; belief is only what one has been caused to experience.
Of course you can.
Such belief "can" be done. One can believe in anything if one wishes...even rainbow unicorns, of course.
I mean it just cannot be done
rationally, meaning "in accord with Determinist assumptions."
You just can't know beyond all doubt whether you did or did not have the option not to believe it.
By Determinism, you have to believe there's no "doubt" at all. You were made to believe it. There's no such thing as an "option," so there's no "doubt."
Now, if you want to
doubt Determinism is true, then you can wonder, as you say.
But here again you see the problem: Determinism makes an iron cage. It does not even grant one permission to wonder. It insists on answering all questions with the fatal,
"Because of physical-material causes; end of story."
So, yes, given the manner in some understand so-called "hard determinism", everything is just cause and effect re the laws of matter. Everything is just so many dominoes toppling over onto each other. Everything is destined/fated to unfold in the only possible reality. Including us.
Yes, that's the point.
I'm confused as to how you can state it like this, but not see the inevitable corollary of that depiction of things: it is that your own cognition is nothing but that. So you are not "thinking," but rather "being-made-to-think-you're-thinking" by material forces. And your cognitions are oriented to
causal, not
truth.
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 10:07 pm I don't see how this is remotely relevant to the problem of Determinism. Why would we think a Deterministic universe would have to apportion all beliefs equal footing? It seems obvious to me it apportions them no footing at all.
Nothing at all is not profoundly intertwined in determinism if you are compelled by the laws of nature to understand determinism in the only possible manner in which you were ever able to. How could all beliefs not be interchangeable if they are the only beliefs possible? Same with the consequences of those beliefs given behaviors we were never able not to choose.
Well, if you believe in Determinism, you'd have to think that all such beliefs were not just "equal," but "equally bunk."
And nihilism itself wouldn't be excluded from that group. You couldn't even believe in the phenomenon of "belief," but would have to relegate it to the status of "epiphenomenon," which essentially means, "odd thing that happens but really means nothing at all."
So you were not able to choose your nihilism. It was not a product of reasons or evidence, but rather of the completely random productions of the random universe: you might simply have been caused to be a Zoroastrian or a Sufi -- but the universe forced you to be a nihilist, and me to be a Christian.
But if that's how it is, we're not
talking to each other right now. I'm
being-made-to-gas, and you're
being-made-to-gas, and the differences between the ways we're
"gassing" are totally irrelevant to the truth of falsehood of the beliefs we
"gas."
if science is based on the only possible reality in the only possible world whatever conclusions that scientists come up with are the only conclusions they could ever have come up with. Same with our reasons here. Same with our arguments. They are all necessarily interchangeable in the only possible world.
Yes, that's what Determinism insists must be true. No science, no reasons, no arguments are related to truth. They're just phenomena, meaning just
"things that happen". Their relative merits cannot be weighed.
That's still the mystery [for me] regarding compatibilists. How, in particular, they are able reconcile determinism with moral responsibility. It simply makes no sense to me. Compelled or not.
Well, I couldn't agree with you more.
Compatibilism seems to me to be a form of intellectual cowardice -- a refusal to let go of the consolations of Determinism while being totally evasive about the implications in it one doesn't like. But I see that no rational account can be made of Compatibilism.
It is, to borrow a metaphor from Isaiah, like trying to sleep with a blanket that's too short: pull in one's feet at one end, and the shoulders get cold; pull it up to the shoulders and the feet get cold; try to wrap oneself, and either the left or right side pop open and the cold air comes in again. There is simply no way to make the "blanket" of Compatibilism keep one warm...except by ceasing to think at all.
Okay, but how remote is it that you will actually be able to demonstrate this? After all, for the person who does accomplish it, it's instant fame. He or she world be the talk of the planet.
Well, as I said, the problem with Determinism is its unfalsifiability: there's always an explanation that seem to "save" it from being unavoidably wrong, and leaves it some crack of plausibility through which a Determinist can slip, fashioning yet another denial as he goes.
However, what pushes him to search for that crack is the mounting data, especially the experiential/existential data, piling up against his Determinism.
I say again:
people never live as Determinists. Never. And the Determinist knows this, which makes his position eternally precarious, even though he always has that crack to slip through. Still, even he, himself, can't live as if his Determinism is actually true; and this troubles him, and makes him lunge for things like Compatibilism, if he lacks the courage to maintain his views with consistency, or as he finds he has no ability to do so anyway.
Philosophy [from my frame of mind] isn't about what the conclusions I arrive at "gets me". It's about what seems reasonable to me.
Then you cannot be a Determinist. For Determinism holds that "reason" itself is nothing but a material cause-effect relation, and is not privileged about "unreason," which is also a material-causal byproduct of equal origin and equally null value.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 10:07 pm Phenomenologically and sociologically, we can demonstrate it from the fact (I'll say it again) that NOBODY LIVES AS A DETERMINIST. That's a phenomenon, and sociological fact.
I marvel that nobody wants to address that fact.
Again, the assumption that you can assert things such as this and that, in asserting them, it makes them true.
No, I'm not assuming that at all. Again, I'm just pointing to a fact anyone can observe, and nobody can help observing.
I'm puzzled by the refusal of Determinists to recognize a fact they cannot help recognizing.
Where does religion fit in here for you? Assuming free will is in fact the real deal.
That's a big question, but you've supplied part of the answer yourself.
If we believe in things like teleology, or even in things like consciousness, reason, volition, personhood, etc. we have no other possibility than to believe free choice exists. And if free choice exists, then we are drawn to the question, "How"? How, in a truly godless universe, does a thing like volition or reason or science or intelligibility or consciousness ever get involved?
So we are at that question.