Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
The answer you accept is best to be the one that is the most probable. If probability cannot be the criterion for your choice then you best select the answer that will do the least harm or the most good.
Only mathematics and formal logic yield absolutely right answers. Answers to metaphysical questions such as causality? are beyond the limit of what we can know from the perspective of probability and concern least harm most good.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
That's why human angst. That's also why if you have to humbly worship a version of God it should be the version of God in process of coming to be. This would be an entirely different God from the metaphysical God absolute.Jan Sand wrote: ↑February 12th, 2019, 5:37 am The two words "harm" and "good" are very personal and can be viewed from all sorts of viewpoints. In wartime killing a million people is both good and bad depending on which side you're on and harhm is so widely variable that it it can easily cause murder.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
'Good ' and 'bad' can't be the names for entities or gods but a great many people think that 'God' is synonymous with absolute good. I'd like to think so too but the problem of evil remains.
There is a human trait which I do consider deserves worthship. That human trait is the search for the good the true and the beautiful. The search plus the ever-elusive object of the search may also be called 'God' .
Please be patient with this apparent diversion from the topic. But it's connected to the topic. One main advantage we humans possess in our holy search is inductive reason, and inductive reason is founded upon causation. Causation gives rise to determinism. Determinism allied with reason, not so-called 'Free Will' , is what gives maximum freedom of choice to individuals who seek the best relative truths and the best ethics available.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
If God is a human creation, wouldn't that put him smack in the middle of those things we comprehend most thoroughly?Jan Sand wrote: ↑February 12th, 2019, 6:15 am Since "God" is a creature out of human conjecture and imagination and is credited with what is claimed as perfection it, unlike us lesser creatures, is beyond human capacity to comprehend. Good and bad does not exist in systems without goals and outside the spectrum of living creatures, simply, has no existence.
Also , perfection is most easy to understand because we retain ideas in an abstract manner .
EX; One is one , and it is no other amount. The generalized mouse is , whatever it is , and its certainly not a cat.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
I wrote "worthship" which is what the word 'worship' originally meant.I guess that most people feel something to be particularly worthy .Aside from the personal understanding that the concept of worship has no meaning for me, the theocratic concepts of good and evil are related to what satisfied a god or angers it and that does not, in any way, fit into the way I understand existence.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
I don't take responsibility for the uncaused quantum events that take place within the bounds of material that I consider to be 'me'.JosephM wrote: ↑February 11th, 2019, 11:22 amI do not wish to skew your statement but ,..Halc wrote: ↑February 9th, 2019, 1:41 am I hold nothing in higher or lesser respect because of its ability (or lack of it) to initiate cause, and I suspect neither would any god. But of course, that's just me.
While I initiate cause all the time, I do not do so by act of will and I feel no responsibility for it.
Did you just say -paraphrased- , that you don't take responsibility for the things you do ?
That is quite different from not taking responsibility for my choices. My choices are not based directly on such causes.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
That is what I was trying to convey, yes. If one defines free will as the ability to initiate cause, then the exercise of that free will in meaningful situations would be to be unfit for survival. Free will needs a different definition than that one.Jan Sand wrote: ↑February 13th, 2019, 1:10 am Our survival depends directly on the priority of suspicions as to what might or might not be effective or dangerous which cannot be divorced from cause and effect. One cannot be random or inattentive and expect to live long or be successful in our endeavors.
For starters, there is implied conflict: Of what am I positing to be free? If there is no conflict, then there is nothing from which I need to be freed. So perhaps freedom from deterministic physics, implying that those deterministic physics is not exactly what you are and what makes choice possible. A compatibilist might then assert that no conflict exists, and thus nothing from which the will need consider itself to be free.
I mean there is definitely conflict. I will to be on the other side of these jail bars, but deterministic physics prevents me from actualizing my will, and thus I am not responsible for failing to save the life of the choking guard on the other side of those bars.
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Re: Does determinism really pose a problem for free will?
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023