Illusion of control and power

Post Reply New Topic

BTW, Determinism has failed.

Doesn't change things.

He is, of course, absolutely right. A frog or a chamaeleon or an archer fish can catch a bug without even intelligence. Pragmatism does not need even Newton, let alone String Theory.

Of course, occasionally the frog will miss, but they catch enough to survive.

If you disagree, please provide for me proof of your claims.

Hard-Determinism is not a null hypothesis. It maybe look as if it is a null-hypothesis in relation to free will, but, there being no free will does not necessarily mean that determinism is true. You are perhaps understating your own burden of proof.

Determinism to perhaps clear the air. My understanding is that the observed physical laws indicate certain actions between matter and energy result in predictable outcomes. Admittedly there is indeterminacy in some specific situations but in general in accommodating our daily actions to assumed reactions we can pretty well predict outcomes if all factors are properly taken into account. Otherwise we could not survive within even the shortest period of time.

There are lots of different sorts of determinism in relation to free will. If you can imagine a position along a spectrum with libertarian, the traditional view of free will on the one side and hard determinism on the other and another view spreading out in the opposite direction towards hard indeterminism. That would be the standard spectrum of free will. Views are usually described as incompatible or compatible with the various definitions. Most Christian philosophers are incompatiblist libertarians, they hold the free will and determinism/indeterminism cannot work with free will. Hard-determinists are incompatiblists (the OP position) also.

But, in our daily lives, I find it puzzling that one should declare considered actions indeterminate if all pertinent factors are taken into account for decisions.

The questions usually under argument are not involved in quantum inter-reactions but those which are at least reasonably understood and functional in how we live and why we act as we do. I don't know where this general category falls within the philosophical considerations presented but I, for one, find little doubt that if I acquaint myself thoroughly with the factors in a decision I am led irretrievably to a particular conclusion.

When the term hard-determinism is used, the idea is that the person is an agent in their own decision making is essentially removed in any meaningful way. It does not mean that we cannot determine the outcomes of decisions; it is a question of personal agency. For example, we can both agree that the decision to eat once a day, is something every human being ought to do and in general it is predictable that human beings will eat once a day, given the opportunity. The fact that we have this information, does not really effect the choice to eat. The questions is, is the person choosing to eat? Hard-determinism would have us believe that everything is determined, external to our own agency (though they would disagree on how), so the choice to eat is an illusion, including, the choice between eating certain types of cereal or the choice to eat bacon and eggs.



You would probably be some sort of a compatibilist, though it is a very wide category.

You present a rather curious example. The choice to eat is not an abstract ordering of events, it is quite at the behest of a growling stomach which has powerful deterministic forces behind it.

Any choice not to follow the physiological instructions comes from other prompts which also have deterministic roots of one kind or another.

These choices are not the result of ideas that pop randomly into one's brain but stem from previous conditioning or current requirements.

I certainly agree with this.



I agree.



I would perhaps, even agree with this. However, a hard-determinist would tell us there is no room for the person to choose other than what is done. Would you agree with that? In essence a hard-determinist puts forward as a proposition, that there is zero room for personal agency. That for every individual the choice between wheat-bix and coco-pops is determined and that there is no room in the mind for any weighing of two or more competing options.

My point is that the consciousness itself is deeply connected to all the forces involved in making a choice. It is not an either-or situation, it is a smooth confluence of neurological processes which end in a dynamic act and the consciousness is a participant in that process. But the consciousness is not an independent operator, it is an envelope of those processes much in the way the multiple stimulating synapses build and reach a point which feeds into a single nerve cell causing firing through its axon.

Okay.
Complex thought and emotion... is it something you think you have control over?
Can you control what it is that you will think or feel?
I know that I for one, have no control over what I might think or feel, I can not stop it, it will happen as a ball will fall to the ground from the sky.
If I try to change my thoughts, that is a programming of resistance, and the next thought would be thought to be under ones control, but it is also pre-programmed, and if I resist that one also, what do I have?
Another pre-programmed sensory based thought and perhaps an emotion.
How does one have a choice to do anything other than what one already wants/needs to do?
The cause can not be from our thoughts and emotions, because thoughts and emotions are a result/effect of another cause, whatever said cause might be within the five senses.
Thoughts are primarily of sound and sight.
Emotion is of touch, for it is a feeling that you get in your body.
Since there is no chance in ones life to have true control of ones thoughts and emotions due to sensory exposure.
Imagination is made from sensory information exposure, and combinations of that, such as abstract thought, are a result of sensory information.
Thoughts and emotions are made from chemicals and chemical combinations and reactions in the brain.
There's my proof.
Time is an illusion, the Earth is only spinning around the Sun in the middle of who knows what and we call it space, but technically there is no such thing as emptiness or nothingness, there is always something.