Determinism - just another theory?

what can be observed can be observed
and it can be observed
that some things happen more often then others
and that some things happen more often when other things happen first.

these are also pretty much all we are capable of actually saying that we know,
with any real degree of confidence.

there is this thing called science, and what it does, is to look for and find,
these two things, and how they connect to each other.

if you want to say it only looks like one thing causes another, you can say that.
i'm not sure what use you can find for putting it that way though.

but you can also use, what massively peer reviewed exploration,
has tenatively determined, because all determinations are tenative really,
updated and even revised, as more and more reliable raw data become available.

so you have this process that is called science, that produces what is as close to reliable knowledge,
as anything, more then any other thing, that humans have come up with,
have an impartial knowledge, of existing.

it isn't that everything, or even anything, has to absolutely be determened,
but that things being determined by other things and processes,
these, this, is a think that exists.

 

To answer your first question, I don't think everything we do is a result of exterior forces. -- Not everything we do, think, or experience are reactions to outer things. Also, some things we are born with, which I think of as interior things.

And about your second question, if everything is predetermined, maybe it's predetermined that people also be held accountable for their actions?

 

I'm not sure how you are thinking of things here but most people who ascribe to determinism would likely point to "things we are born with" as examples to strengthen their case.

External (exterior) in this context usually means anything that you are not personally effecting the change of with supposed free will.

Like a crude example would be you didn't nor could you have chose to have wings naturally like a hawk. Exterior prior conditions led to you developing into a wingless human (human sperm fertilizing human egg, DNA, genes, etc)

However if you drink redbull then you may get wings.

 

One thing I've thought about over the past couple days, after watching some videos about consciousness and given what I take as an implicit questioning in the op title ( just another theory?) of whether you think this concept of philosophical determinism could be held to scientific scrutiny, is that there seems to be this apparent paradox between two, maybe more, aspects of our nature where I don't see us being able to advance understanding much further on this topic in the foreseeable future.

I think that the determinist, compatibilist and even dualist would like to gain as much knowledge about the physical reach of the brain in causing or influencing behaviors, thoughts, etc. But this thirst for knowledge, has for the time being lost out to our expression of compassion and empathy. Ethics, (which scientists need to consider when performing experiments, have some aspects which are very applaudable for human rights and other aspects which need to be considered due to our litigious culture) presupposes free will and in doing so limits the scope of neuroscientific inquiry to "basic" correlative tests, or relies on people having disorders and diseases.

Like it's not as if we can take healthy people have them perform a language test and then shut off language associated regions of the brain and have them perform the same test. So I don't see how we could significantly advance our understanding of a lot of the potential physical processes of the mind/body issue without violating ethics.

My only solutions, which admittedly are a bit hazy, rely in advances in technology. Either AI is built to mimic the brain or advances in nanotechnology allow for a different approach to studying various aspects of how brains work.

 

I’m leaning towards determinism in the sense that God is omniscient and knows what will happen before we do. But we still have free will. In the end though, God knows the entire design of things so is my free will only something that seems real to me?

 

How do you reconcile those ideas?

 

My faith comes in. It’s hard to explain but I believe that God exists therefore I believe in these views.

 

Ok... but if God is all knowing, is God not all powerful then to allow your free will ? or you just put your faith in some illogical conundrum?

 

He allows my free will, (I believe this) but the hope is we align our will with His. That said, who can really completely fathom God? I don’t pretend to.

 

Yah, I think it's multiplying entities beyond necessity which is one reason why I don't believe in God.

But one of the recent videos I watched discussed the Simulation Hypothesis, the idea where we all live in a Computer Simulation, similar to The Matrix and the premises which were laid out in the video were intriguing.

I've mentioned it here before but there are conceptual parallels between God and the Simulator(s) of that hypothesis.

 

The only advantage I find with the idea of Simulator(s) over the common depicitions of God is I don't feel the same need to question them in same way.

If an infant dies or a bunch of people get wiped out in a Natural Disaster, I find more solace in just viewing the Simulator as a jackass or at least inept.

 

But faith is an individual experience. Your view of what I believe is always going to be shaped by your own world view. I think it’s safe to not have unreasonable expectations of how others should view our ideas.

 

That is why I asked questions, to get a better understanding of your view...

Don't follow what you mean here.

 

If an infant dies or a bunch of people get wiped out... why does that mean anything is "wrong"? If there is a God to be angry at, then it follows that we are eternal... so their deaths were just part of our illusion and the souls behind them are unhurt.

 

If we're going to attribute that array of "omni" qualities to a God (omniscient, omnibenevolent, etc) circumstances such as that illustrate natural evil existing in the world, evil beyond what we do amongst each other with our supposed free will. So we're led into a paradox where God cannot possess all those qualities, if he's all-knowing and all-powerful, then he's not all-loving, if he's all-loving, then he's not all-powerful.

I don't understand what this means...

 

What I mean is that if there isn't a God, then someone being killed is a sad thing, because they are gone and there is no "after".

If there is a God to be angry at, then there's nothing to be angry about, because death is not real, we are eternal beings. It is not a natural evil that he can allow or prevent, it is part of the illusion we call our reality and to take it away removes our free will. I don't believe there is such a thing as hell, or heaven, or many of the other crazy things in the Bible that make no sense with an all-loving God. My current beliefs are an accumulation of things that have happened to me and books I have read, and I'm not "certain" I am right, by the way, I just am going with what I deeply feel to be true, which is probably the thing Christians call "faith". It's like, I didn't need to know exercise was good for me, I could feel the difference between doing it and not. This feels a little like that.

There is no such objective thing as suffering. It is an illusion. It's purpose of suffering in the illusion is to allow us to experience its opposite, and also to be one of the stimuli that lead us to realizing the illusion. That is the conclusion I reached when a friend asked me to explain suffering, in light of "God" as I now perceive it.

 

That's true and most of us would agree, whether we believe in God or not, that in most instances it is.

There is something quite disconcerting to me with your view that all stimuli is illusory, seems a slippery slope to undifferentating rape and murder from joy or winning the lottery. I'm skeptical to your argument that people (or animals for that matter) who experience suffering necessarily experience it's opposite as well. As alluded to earlier in the thread when discussing ethics, I think it's applaudable for human beings to minimize certain unpleasant behaviors, which in the example of scientific tests is the appeal to ethics committees, waivers, etc and maximize other enjoyable behaviors. However, assuming our reality has been designed in such a way as to be illusory, I don't follow how unveiling the illusion of reality removes our free will, that seems backward af.

Suffering is conceptual and thus it's experience is a matter of degree and subjective in a sense, but it's components such as pain, grief, etc. have physical basis, such as nociceptors for the experience of physical pain.

You seem to take a strong philosophical idealist position, given that these topics are discussed in the corporeal, that's the only way I can understand discussing them. I'm not sure what other grounds we can really agree on in discussing the topic, I mean otherwise why not call an elephant a pear?

 

I think a common fallacy when atheists argue about the existence of God is that nothing catastrophic should happen if God is all powerful, all knowing and loving. In my belief, He did create a perfect world but He allowed for human will. On some level, He obviously knew humans would be flawed as compared to Him. God isn’t a genie ready to grant wishes at whim, and thinking that this is how He ought to be, sometimes creates disillusions about His nature. Well, if God let’s this or that happen, how can He be loving?

If you know your neighbor is being abused and you do nothing, are you evil? If you don’t consider yourself evil for doing nothing when you have the power to do so, or at least intervene in some way, why should you assume God is evil? Or unknowing or uncaring?

That argument has always been a straw man to me. I identified as an atheist a few years ago and it was something I used when arguing with believers.

 

You misunderstand the argument.

In your example, the roughly equivalent argument is if you are perceived to have the love, power and knowledge about the Neighbor situation, it doesn't necessarily make you evil if you don't do anything but you're allowing evil to persist, so the extent of those qualities you have been said to possess should be called into question.

 

Everything you do is free will but the results are just 1/7,000,000,000th a result of your choices.