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Yes. imo determinism is... kind of a useless idea? Like, you can say something is caused deterministically, but that doesn't actually affect things like fault or intention. "But my brain chemicals made me do it." My brother in Christ you ARE the brain chemicals
Explanation is not excuse. It doesn't matter wether they did a bad thing because they wanted to or their genes compelled them do. The outcome is still the same.
However, that doesn't make it a bad idea. Accepting the fact that we live in a deterministic universe entirely dismantles the foundation from emotions like hate and replaces it with compassion. I don't like every person I meet but I don't hate anyone nor I blame anyone for what they are - they didn't have a say in it.
It's not weird at all. We all do this.
But...
If you do it ALL the time, you're not accepting any responsibility for your own actions. You'll never learn from your mistakes or improve your behavior. Your brain chemicals may have let you down, but what are YOU going to do to prevent that in the future? What action of YOURS caused those brain chemicals to fail?
Yeah, expanding on this and to use one of OP's examples: Sure, your brain isn't an all remembering book, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take active measures to improve on deficiencies. If you are forgetful, take better notes and refer to them when appropriate.
It's an easy excuse for pretty much anything. Most likely an excuse to be lazy, because that's where it comforts someone... Doesn't mean it has to be untrue... Just that it's easy to use it as an excuse for the wrong things.
Kurt Vonnegut said this was the best prayer he knew.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change,
"The courage to change the things I can,
"And the wisdom to know the difference."
It's not Joe's fault he lost his job when the factory closed, it is his fault that he didn't go to the local college and take some courses to learn a new skill.
Bad thing happened = statistically, bad things happen sometimes.
Forgetting = Sometimes I forget.
Nothing made anything happen. Things happening is what existence is.
βLife exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever. . . . You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.β
That is equating two different types of infinity.
Oh god, that sounds like it's from this weird woo woo book I read a long time ago, I want to say the guy's name started with an E?
Invoking determinism is fine, just be aware it rarely solves the problem you think it does.
Saying 'some bad thing happened - the universe made it happen, it's not my fault' - what are you really wanting to achieve with that? If it was beyond your ability to do otherwise, then you probably want to process this some other way (mindfulness / therapy / talking it out with someone) until your emotions align with the facts. Because you don't have a "responsibility" problem you have a "thinking it was my responsibility when it wasn't" problem. And appealing to determinism isn't going to change your habit of doing that.
On the other hand, if you actually could have made a difference / prevented it but knowingly didn't (or were sufficiently careless that your culpability is real) then appealing to fate might be a short term plaster but it's a bad long term fix.
And this is because rather than dealing with a feeling of guilt or dealing with how you make choices you are masking these things by making yourself out to be a passive object that life happens to. Again, as a short term cope that can be fine, but do you see how making a habit of that just undermines your ability to believe you can grow and be better?
At its extreme appealing to determinism can remove your perception of everyone's responsibility. "Everything's inevitable"... "We're all just biological machines".. "I couldn't help it"... And while, from a certain point of view, physics can lend evidence to determinism. It doesn't actually affect how life works because even if we are all biological machines, we still need to ascribe what we call 'responsibility' to the biological machine through which something undesirable came. People will still want to avoid people who hurt them. The law will still have to segregate the wrongdoer. Even if everything is now "deterministic". (The Amazon warehouse sorting robots will isolate a misbehaving robot even if that robot has not one jot of control over its programming - if you see what I mean).
So all I'm saying is belief in "fate" has an illusory power. Where it makes us feel less bad about something. But taken to its extreme it makes us not feel responsible for anything, while life carries on as normal and inevitably penalises us for that.
So it's better for you to expose yourself to the pain of "yes it was my fault" (if indeed it was). But then in that pain not to give way to hopelessness, but rather realise pain (if based on truth) is a fuel by which to change yourself. Get other's help if necessary. But don't give up the opportunity to grow. The pain is actually a sign you care, don't deaden that. It's the stuff of life.
There are many many ways to slice up this problem but a common division of camps is
Free Will
Hard determinism
Soft determinism
Your comment is touching on a lot of the arguments between soft and hard determinism but hard determinism has really fallen out of favor recently due to (imo) a better comprehension of the definition of self.
Hard determinism relied on an understanding that the actor being "forced" into their actions lacked agency and thus any responsibility for their actions (which is a generally internally consistent statement - we don't consider actors responsible for actions taken under duress for certain values of responsible and duress)... however, that comprehension relied on (imo from here on out) an acceptance that the actor that lived in the deterministic world and the actor we were passing judgement on were in some way distinct - in essence that we are something more than our role in existence. Again imo, that leans into some of the same difficulties most free will models have - that there is something able to effect existence that is itself unaffected (in some significant way) by existence. (I am skimping on why this is important. Feel free to ask me to expand on it)
It seems much more logical that everything in existence can be affected and affect everything else in existence and if that's the case, much like a defective gear in a simple machine, we may judge an actor to be responsible for the outcomes they materialize.
So in response to your comment I'd stress that living in a deterministic world doesn't necessarily divorce us from responsibility for our actions and understanding why can actually be quite empowering.
(...) better comprehension of the definition of self (...)
Yes, i believe the answer is in this. Believing in a given definition of self is part of the definition of self.
Such a belief can be :
(...) even if we are all biological machines, we still need to ascribe what we call βresponsibilityβ to the biological machine (...)
(that one was from : @[email protected] )
You don't need determinism for that. Our brains are absolutely fallible, no need and it doesn't help to punk yourself over that, with or without determinism.
But just as determinism for you can explain bad things happening, so can nondeterminism. We know statistically how fast radioactive matter decay. But it's impossible to know for a single atom, it could be within seconds, or it could be in a thousand years. We have no way of telling before it actually happens.
Some things are impossible to predict, and some things just happen by accident. Whether the universe made it happen one way or the other, doesn't really matter.
What matters is that you have a large degree of free will, and you can choose to cope the way that suits you best.
But your own actions are your responsibility.
A Quantum Dice Roll is not what I consider free will...
Free will can exist because consciousness is an abstraction created by the brain similar to a virtual reality on a computer, where the laws of physics is what the brain builds upon, consciousness is a function of the brain, and SELF consciousness is a layer above that, constructed by the functionality of the brain, that far exceed normal physical causality. While the brain is dependent on physics, the "simulation" is not.
There's a reason we have a feeling of free will, if free will didn't exist, a sense of it would serve no purpose. So Occam's razor indicates that we shouldn't have that sense without also having free will.
We can imagine a future far removed from our current state, fantasy and SciFi books are clear examples of that. How would that be possible without free will?
If we have free will, then who or what is making those decisions and where is it located?
Humans do things for two reasons; either you have to or you want to. There's no freedom in having to do something but you can't choose the things you want either.
In sorry op the universe determined you were a loser from before you were born. There is nothing you can do π
Noooo π±
Why do I have to be a Jerry?
Fucking rick sanchez always fucking up my life
Just crawl. It works.
Our ancestors crawling from the sea onto land millions of years ago is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Donβt crawl. Swim. Swim away.
I genuinely believe that we live in a deterministic universe and that there is no "self" nor free will, so no, I don't think there's anything weird about that at all. Your view of the world is probably more accurate than the vast majority of population.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, especially when you state it as your belief.
I do think it's likely accurate, too. If you look at brain scans, we can see that decisions are made before we're consciously aware of them. Also split brain patients will attribute intent to actions of their completely separate hemisphere.
I don't think this is a healthy mindset, though. Personally I think this way as a coping mechanism more than anything else, even if I do genuinely believe it's likely how the universe works.
Determinism is extremely comforting to me. I took philosophy in uni and when it came to debating free will and determinism I was absolutely the odd one out.
I think it'd be an awful and arbitrary world if we were held morally responsible (in a cosmic sense - nothing as inaccurate as the legal system or whatever) for actions we could not control. Every expression I've ever seen for Free Will tends to include some widget or gear somewhere in that picture that could - in the precise same situation - choose either outcome randomly. If that is how the universe operates then I personally think that it actually divorces us from agency since our decision making can in some cases be reduced to how this die we have no control over happened to be rolled.
To contrast, in a deterministic world there are a lot of actions that may be described to someone casually that are extremely inaccurate - in many legal systems there is a consideration of mental competency as an example... but, again at a cosmic level, the shit you actually do is clearly and incontrovertibly assigned to you. If in scenario X where you could push a button to slap someone in the face and get a hundred bucks (with all other variables constant) your decision on whether to push the button is 100% your decision.
Now, some people are uncomfortable with the prospect of being reduced into something mechanical but it's important to recognize the absolutely staggering complexity of that machine. I am comfortable being reduced to a simple machine as long as it's acknowledged that that machine is composed of my entire physical being and every interaction I've ever had in my life... and that every one of those interactions are composed of the entire physical being of those actors and all of their interactions... and ditto (it's turtles all the way down).
Admitting the existence of such a complex system of indecipherably complex links and nodes and then saying "And after all that, I rolled a d6 and it came up 5 so you pushed the button" is actually deeply discomforting to me.
@[email protected], you describe the problem in details and very well in my opinion.
Do you see the root comment from @[email protected] in here as a good answer to your questioning ?
I popped reply onto that comment because I think hard vs. soft determinism is also an important point to ponder - I'd omitted diving into that above because 1) you see how long my comment already is, and 2) I genuinely think it's a more settled question.
But I bet you interact with the world and have an effect on what happens. You could for example keep notes and then not forget about things. Or influence something so it's likely to turn out more positive?!
"My application is broken, but what can I do? Bits on & off are dictated by laws of physics.. If only I was the developer...Wait, I am?!"
Exactly how it reads