Consent and non-consent are perceived outcomes. They have no objective existence other than as experiences, i.e. biochemical responses to environmental stimulae. There is no 'gifter" involved (though there are lots of grifters selling one).
But we have been given the ability of consent. Nothing can be done to us without our consent. The standard definition implies that determinism is doing something to us without our consent. That’s why people are up in arms. People know intuitively that they are participants in the choices they make. They are not simply rocks rolling down a hill.We are also very similar to a rock rolling down a hill. We submit to the forces governing our actions, and follow the path of least resistance until our potential energy is used up.
I’m getting impatient for the astounding revelation portion of this program.
People also know intuitively that nature abhors a vacuum, that the world is flat, and that an object in motion will come to a stop unless propelled by a force.
That's certainly a fashionable belief at the moment. It's not obvious to me that it is in any way accurate.
They can be outcomes. (i.e., I consented to this and now must deal with the consequences) They can be gifts (i.e., I consented to give my share of the money for the teacher's gift). I am talking about decision making. Consent is what must take place whenever you make a choice. Even if you were being held prisoner and were being tortured in order for your captors to get information out of you, you may choose to give them the information they want rather than continue to be tortured. You are consenting. Consent is a prerequisite for any choice made, even if it's the lesser of two evils. For example, you could die before giving information that would be a death sentence for a family member. No one can pry your mouth open and force information out of you unless you consent to it.
You're making a huge leap that human beings don't have the capacity for change and that we will ultimately destroy ourselves. That could happen if we continue the way we are, especially with nuclear capability. This knowledge lies outside of the framework of modern thought, so there is no way you can compare what is happening now and concluding that the trajectory of where we are headed is inevitable. Yes, total destruction can happen unless there is a major shift. That's what I'm trying to demonstrate; we can now change that trajectory by a complete shift in human conduct based on a change in the environment.
Points in a system do not explain how human beings use information from the past to make present day choices. As the author stated, the past is not here. It can't CAUSE the present, which is very problematic when we are dissecting what is true and what isn't. Humans take in information from the past (using their memory) and make choices based on those past experiences. Many of their choices are influenced by what occurred, but the past does not cause their choices as if to say they are dominoes without any say at all. Humans are able to contemplate. The past is a huge part of that contemplation, but again, the past does not CAUSE the present. If anyone can't temporarily accept this observation, I won't be able to continue because the discovery hinges on this fact.
That’s true, but suppose you could really run an experiment and “back up” the universe, and then replay it with the same initial conditions. If, at the termination of this replay, a person made the exact same choice as he or she did in the first iteration, and if you replayed the same history again and again and the person made the same choice, it still would not prove hard determinism. The compatibilist simply points out that the person will always make the exact same choice given the exact same initial conditions and antecedent events because that is precisely what he or she wants to do, under those particular circumstances.
This is, more or less, what I think.
No one has a choice once it is made, but you are jumping ahead by assuming that excuses will be necessary.
I agree that when hard determinism is defined in the way you suggest, it is absurd, but that is what is being contested, the definition, which is faulty. As far as compatibilism, they are also playing with words. In one sense they say that we have no free will if we have a gun to our head or have OCD but could be judged harshly according to how much "free will" a person has if they don't have a gun to their head or have OCD. They use the term "free will" arbitrarily by fabricating a definition that allows them to accept the status quo of blame and punishment while trying desperately to make their kind of free will compatible with determinism without contradiction. I understand why they have done this. We need to hold people accountable, yet the knowledge of determinism is being supported more and more everyday by science. This is their concerted effort to reconcile this dilemma, but it's flawed.
Those who support compatibilist free will, which remember is also know as soft DETERMINISM, would agree with most of what you say. No compatibilist denies that we are exempt from our genes and upbringing, and certainly not from the effects of mental illness. What we deny is that just because we didn’t choose our nature or nurture, it follows that we can’t choose anything at all, including what color shirt to wear or what soft drink to choose. That’s a huge non sequitur.I will make my viewpoint as simple as possible as someone who has never had much interest in philosophy but who also doesn't believe we have much if any free will. I tend to bend towards determinism but maybe not hard determinism. I think of it this way, while I despise Trump and consider him a huge threat to the country, I don't think he can help who he is. Imo, based on my reading, he has symptoms of psychopathy, a disease of the frontal cortex, which we have no effective treatment for. Psychopaths lack empathy as well as any type of a moral compass. He also obviously suffers from the mental illness known as malignant narcissism and based on my decades working as a nurse who cared for both mentally ill people and people with dementia, he certainly exhibits symptoms of dementia. He belongs in a confined area, to protect the rest of us from him. I had a patient who honestly believed she was a queen with billions of dollars and she would get angry if anyone denied her that status. In reality, she was an older woman, poverty stricken and living in an assisted living facility, so she was harmless. He reminds me a bit of her, but he's not harmless due to his political status. As long as people worship him and agree with him, it's all good, but if you don't, he will say that he hates you, like for example Taylor Swift after she endorsed Harris. I'm not trying to make this political but we all know these people so they are examples of why I don't find free will to be a real thing. If we do have any, it's very limited. Based on reading some of these discussions, the jury is still out.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't have prisons, it means they should be humane places that keep dangerous people away from the rest of society, unless or until they can be positively influenced. Sadly, many if not most of our current prisons in the US are far from humane.
I put it like this. We are all victims or benefactors of our genetic and environmental influences. So, imo, people can change to some extent based on the influences they are exposed to. Mental illnesses are hard to treat successfully, so that's part of it too, but if someone who is bipolar with schizo effective disorder, like my former patient the queen, is treated with medications that are effective, they might change. Effective meds for mental illnesses are rare.
I enjoyed reading two rather simple books about free will by Richard Oerton. One was "The Nonsense of Free Will" and the other was "The Cruelty of Free Will". I was already skeptical that we have free will, based on my life experiences with a large variety of people from diverse backgrounds, as well as having several mentally ill family members, but I liked the way that author explained it. He supports hard determinism. One doesn't need a degree in philosophy to understand his explanations, so the books were perfect for someone like me.
Have fun discussing one of IIDB's favorite topics. Not sure it's been determined for me to continue to post in this thread.
Peacegirl, what I would say is this: you and your author’s conception of time is broadly Buddhistic, which is fine and dandy with me, because, as mentioned, it has real support in modern physics. And it sounds to me as if you and your author’s conception of determinism/free will is mainly compatibilist free will, which, remember, is still DETERMINISM — it’s called soft determinism. However, you’re free to reject that label if you wish; I get the idea that you are calling yourself a determinist while contesting the standard definition of determinism. So go ahead and lay out the rest of your argument.
So … torture elicits consent?
It is not compatibilist free will because, in the account of determinism that the author demonstrates [accurately], there are no exceptions. We cannot be a little bit pregnant. We either are or we are not. The same goes for free will. We either have it or we don't. We cannot have both. Just because we can make choices "freely", which is a colloquial expression only and can be said accordingly: "I did this of my own free will" (without force, influence, or external pressure), does not mean we have the "free will" that compatibilists use to judge the moral rightness of a choice? Aren't they saying in so many words that if a person chooses what they believe is not morally right, that that person could have chosen otherwise? How could a person have chosen otherwise when determinism says that's impossible? Yes, a person can do otherwise when there is reason to change, but that does not grant us the kind of free will compatibilists are using. What is their motive? Obviously, it's to separate those who should be given a free pass and those who should not, and it boils down to the same status quo that society has always used; critical judgement, blame, and punishment. They just try to justify it in a different way.
