NOT about hard determinism v. free will

[pood]

This is a thread about hard determinism, but not hard determinism v. free will. I don’t want to debate that at all. It has been done to death here, though I’m sure it will be resurrected at some point.

What I’d like to know how it feels, personally, to be a hard determinist. I wouldn’t know, since I’m not one.

For example, I hear a lot of theists who deconverted to atheism describe the palpable sense of relief they feel at longer believing they are being watched or judged or perhaps manipulated by an all-seeing god or gods. Again, I wouldn’t know about that change in feeling, since I’ve never had any god belief.

Several years ago there was a movie, Get Out, about a mad scientist and his pals who kidnap people, mostly black, and then hypnotize them and operate on their brains to remove their free will. The victims become unwitting slaves, doing the bidding of their masters, unable to do otherwise. Yet they are locked inside their prison but consciously aware of their absence of agency. As one victim is told before his operation, “you will become a spectator to your own life.”

Notice what I’m about to say is not an argument to consequence, since I’m not saying one should reject hard determinism because it has bad consequences. But it does appear that if you believe hard determinism is true, you ought to think of yourself as a spectator to your own life.

Everything you do, think, or say, under hard determinism, is not really you doing, saying, or thinking, anything. It is the product of blind deterministic forces dating to the big bang. You deserve no blame for the bad things you do. But you also deserve no praise for the good things. Indeed, “you” aren’t doing anything at all. Blind nature is. You have no agency. You have no choice. You are a helpless puppet of forces completely outside your control.

Now again, I believe hard determinism to be false, and have stated my reasons. But it seems to me that if I were a hard determinist, it would be awful to believe that I am completely a puppet of blind impersonal forces, unable even to choose Coke over Pepsi — that choice is made for me. It strikes me as being bad, and maybe worse, than believing I am under the watchful judgment of a God. At least the god may like me, but hard determinism couldn’t care about me in the least.

I’d have to believe that when I speak, I am a ventriloquist’s dummy; and I’m doing nothing more than reporting on thoughts and acts not my own, like a transcriptionist: literally a spectator at my own life.

I’d just like to know how hard determinists feel about this. To me, it’s extremely creepy, but again, that is no reason to reject hard determinism. There are quite sufficient arguments, using evidence and logic, to reject it on a rational basis, as I’ve done with both theism and hard determinism.

And let me stress one more time I’m intending another free will v. hard determinism debate. I would just like to know how hard determinists feel about their belief.

 

[Elixir]

I’d like to know how it feels, personally, to be a hard determinist.

It’s hard.

Seriously though. It matters little to me whether hard determinism or free will concepts are closer to reality. Neither bring “true” would alter the human experience for me. YMMV

 

[pood]

One thing I suppose is that most people don’t care about hard determinism v. free will because most don’t know much about either. I’m just thinking of those who have thought about this and have come out as hard determinists.

 

[Politesse]

First of all, thank you. Nice to see a thread on this topic that is a bit innovative.

That said, your speculation seems highly imaginative, to me. I don't particularly miss a doctrine I never fully embraced to begin with, nor think of it very often. Why would I be a "spectator to my own life" any more as a hard determinist than as a compatibilist? Omnino non sequitur. Our minds are our minds, whether or not one arbitrarily labels them "free". Our agency is not lost or irrelevant just because it exists in a deterministic universe, it is just predictable in its effects. Just like anything else.

Are you disturbed by the thought of the sun rising in the morning because you did not personally ask it to? Of course not. It does so because its role in the grand chain of cause and effect is mathematically certain, not for any particular purpose, and certainly not as any personal slight to your authority. Why should I be any more or less disturbed to realize that the endorphins from my morning exercise likely had something to do with the compliment I got for my unusually zippy morning lecture a few hours later? Science would predict a release of seratonins in response to such a compliment, and it will have been right.

I do not see any evidence the doctrine of free will makes people any happier. If anything, it seems to have been designed to make people terrified that when they are consigned to hell it will be their own personal fault, the result of the nails they personally nailed into baby Jesus' little hands when they looked at that playbill lustfully that one time, rather than just the will of a capricious God. Is that supposed to make people feel happy? Fulfilled? It sounds depressing to me. The human condition is dismal enough as it is, without making things worse by inventing reasons to blame yourself for conditions of life that weren't really in your control.

 

[pood]

Well, of course, I don’t believe in God, and I can understand people who deconvert feeling relief in not believing in oppressive nonsense. The compatiblist doesn’t deny the endorphins example. Again, I don’t want to rehash the hard determinist/compatibilist debate, but as I expressed in the OP, it would feel rather weird to me to suppose that everything I do, really has nothing to do with me. Like in the movie Get Out.

 

[Politesse]

Again, omnino non sequitur, that doesn't follow at all. Why would your own actions have nothing to do with you? Of course they do. They were done by you, not someone else. You're not possesed. There's no puppetmaster. Just a whole bunch of interacting selves, whose behavior is observable and predictable. Like all natural phenomena.

 

[DBT]

If the world is deterministic, it is neither hard or soft.

 

[bigfield]

Huh. TIL that I might be a compatibilist?

Everything you do, think, or say, under hard determinism, is not really you doing, saying, or thinking, anything. It is the product of blind deterministic forces dating to the big bang. You deserve no blame for the bad things you do. But you also deserve no praise for the good things.

The concept of a person who makes moral choices, and can be held responsible for them, is still a useful abstraction. We can't live our lives by treating ourselves and society as a big cascade of inevitable physical interactions at the level of fundamental interactions.

 

[pood]

Again, omnino non sequitur, that doesn't follow at all. Why would your own actions have nothing to do with you? Of course they do. They were done by you, not someone else. You're not possesed. There's no puppetmaster. Just a whole bunch of interacting selves, whose behavior is observable and predictable. Like all natural phenomena.

Well, right, yes, that is what I think! I am a compatibilist. But I am asking hard determinists these questions. But if you, yourself, characterize yourself as a hard determinist (I don’t know whether you do) then what you are saying above is really the essence of compatibilism.

I realize you are a determinist, as am I, but that is why, in this thread, I am making a distinction between determinism and hard determinism, because the compatiblist is a determinist, too.

 

[pood]

Huh. TIL that I might be a compatibilist?

Everything you do, think, or say, under hard determinism, is not really you doing, saying, or thinking, anything. It is the product of blind deterministic forces dating to the big bang. You deserve no blame for the bad things you do. But you also deserve no praise for the good things.

The concept of a person who makes moral choices, and can be held responsible for them, is still a useful abstraction. We can't live our lives by treating ourselves and society as a big cascade of inevitable physical interactions at the level of fundamental interactions.

Well, of course, I don’t think that, because I am a compatibilist, but the hard determinist does think we are a big cascade, etc. That is why I am addressing the question to them. Now if the hard determinist were to to talk about being held responsible for choices as a useful abstraction, then he/she/they would be advocating instrumentalism, or the noble lie, because the hard determinist cannot believe on pain of self-contradiction that we are morally responsible for our choices.

 

[DBT]

Determinism is neither hard or soft.

 

[pood]

Determinism is neither hard or soft.

I specifically don’t want to get into that debate. Soft determinism is another word for compatibilism. If you don’t believe that soft determinism is a valid category, fine. I feel I showed in the other threads the physical and logical contradictions of hard determinism, but that is not the topic of this thread. The topic is: what does it feel like, for you, as a hard determinist, to be a meat robot, as hard determinist Jerry Coyne specifically called people at his blog? In my OP I endeavored to draw out what I believe are the actual implications of holding such a belief.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Edited/deleted. Off topic for this thread

 

[bigfield]

Now if the hard determinist were to to talk about being held responsible for choices as a useful abstraction, then he/she/they would be advocating instrumentalism, or the noble lie, because the hard determinist cannot believe on pain of self-contradiction that we are morally responsible for our choices.

Morality is a social construct. But it's a social construct that we utterly depend on to deal with other people and to run our own lives.

Maybe it's less of a "noble lie" and more of "I can't make decisions without treating myself and others as moral agents". But I suppose the point is the same: the abstraction is a useful lie.

 

[bigfield]

The topic is: what does it feel like, for you, as a hard determinist, to be a meat robot, as hard determinist Jerry Coyne specifically called people at his blog?

Could you link to that please? I'm curious how Coyne actually operates, and expects others to operate, as a human.

 

[DBT]

Determinism is neither hard or soft.

I specifically don’t want to get into that debate. Soft determinism is another word for compatibilism. If you don’t believe that soft determinism is a valid category, fine. I feel I showed in the other threads the physical and logical contradictions of hard determinism, but that is not the topic of this thread. The topic is: what does it feel like, for you, as a hard determinist, to be a meat robot, as hard determinist Jerry Coyne specifically called people at his blog? In my OP I endeavored to draw out what I believe are the actual implications of holding such a belief.

I merely point out that when both sides of the debate agree with the given definition of determinism, the terms 'soft determinism' or 'hard determinism' are misleading regardless of which side has a better argument in the free will debate, where compatibilism or incompatibilism is a more accurate representation.

 

[Politesse]

Well, right, yes, that is what I think! I am a compatibilist. But I am asking hard determinists these questions. But if you, yourself, characterize yourself as a hard determinist (I don’t know whether you do) then what you are saying above is really the essence of compatibilism.

If the "essence of compatibilism" is not thinking there is any need or point whatsoever in positing a "free will", then yes, but it is poorly named. What is my view "compatible" with? Not this medieval nonsense about free wills, I am quite certain. Nor do I think (because I think it is a pure fiction whose utility was made obsolete by the advent of neuroscience) that the intentions of a "free will" should be the arbiter of morality.

In any case, I have told you what life is like for a hard determinist. If you find my description of it to be more or less identical to life as a compatibilist, perhaps you have learned something useful about hard determinism.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

This is a thread about hard determinism, but not hard determinism v. free will. I don’t want to debate that at all. It has been done to death here, though I’m sure it will be resurrected at some point.

What I’d like to know how it feels, personally, to be a hard determinist. I wouldn’t know, since I’m not one.

For example, I hear a lot of theists who deconverted to atheism describe the palpable sense of relief they feel at longer believing they are being watched or judged or perhaps manipulated by an all-seeing god or gods. Again, I wouldn’t know about that change in feeling, since I’ve never had any god belief.

Several years ago there was a movie, Get Out, about a mad scientist and his pals who kidnap people, mostly black, and then hypnotize them and operate on their brains to remove their free will. The victims become unwitting slaves, doing the bidding of their masters, unable to do otherwise. Yet they are locked inside their prison but consciously aware of their absence of agency. As one victim is told before his operation, “you will become a spectator to your own life.”

Notice what I’m about to say is not an argument to consequence, since I’m not saying one should reject hard determinism because it has bad consequences. But it does appear that if you believe hard determinism is true, you ought to think of yourself as a spectator to your own life.

Everything you do, think, or say, under hard determinism, is not really you doing, saying, or thinking, anything. It is the product of blind deterministic forces dating to the big bang. You deserve no blame for the bad things you do. But you also deserve no praise for the good things. Indeed, “you” aren’t doing anything at all. Blind nature is. You have no agency. You have no choice. You are a helpless puppet of forces completely outside your control.

Now again, I believe hard determinism to be false, and have stated my reasons. But it seems to me that if I were a hard determinist, it would be awful to believe that I am completely a puppet of blind impersonal forces, unable even to choose Coke over Pepsi — that choice is made for me. It strikes me as being bad, and maybe worse, than believing I am under the watchful judgment of a God. At least the god may like me, but hard determinism couldn’t care about me in the least.

I’d have to believe that when I speak, I am a ventriloquist’s dummy; and I’m doing nothing more than reporting on thoughts and acts not my own, like a transcriptionist: literally a spectator at my own life.

I’d just like to know how hard determinists feel about this. To me, it’s extremely creepy, but again, that is no reason to reject hard determinism. There are quite sufficient arguments, using evidence and logic, to reject it on a rational basis, as I’ve done with both theism and hard determinism.

And let me stress one more time I’m intending another free will v. hard determinism debate. I would just like to know how hard determinists feel about their belief.

'Get Out''s central plot idea is that the brains of old white people are transferred into the heads of the young black victims.
Yes, the victim still retains some presence (part of their brain remains), which enables one victim to give a warning to the hero.
There is irony in that these people who hate blacks actually physically become black people, even though they retain their old white mannerisms and speech. The latter BTW allows some brilliant acting displays by the black actors. It is a really good movie.