Steve said: what is it about determinism that has "devastating consequences" and will "render your actions inert and your life meaningless"? ... Determinism (pragmatically understood as the hope of explaining events in terms of causes and effects) is a belief held to fulfill our desires to predict and control things. .. How does that hope make you or James or anyone else suicidal?
dmb replied: Oh, I see. Your question is predicated on the assumption that determinism is just pragmatically useful when we're doing physics. Now that I understand your point, I see how ridiculous it is. Physics isn't one bit depressing but determinism is, you unbelievable hack. I'm just not going to talk to you anymore until get a dictionary. Steve said: Implicit in this claim is that you didn't understand what I was saying before, so why are you so certain that you have finally grasped it now? No, I am not limiting determinism to the study of physics. But the good news is that you are getting closer. You've made some progress! dmb says: You really don't see why I'm calling you a ridiculous hack? Look, I'm saying that determinism is a philosophical doctrine that says human beings are determined. Causal determinism is a particular version of determinism that extends the laws of cause and effect from physics to the sphere of human action. Your question is based on the ridiculous idea that determinism isn't a philosophical position about human beings. Your question is based on a rather hair-brained conflation of physics and philosophy. It makes no sense. What's worse, you are doing this after I already pointed out the difference several times. The idea that there are causal laws is a fine idea when you're talking about billiard balls or rockets, I said, but not when we are talking about human actions. The latter is causal determinism and the former is just physics. In effect, you are asking me why I find physics so depressing, why the regularity of the physical world would make life meaningless? And apparently you are still quite oblivious and cannot see how profoundly confused you are. "In the past the logic has been that if chemistry professor are composed exclusively of atoms and if atoms follow only the law of cause and effect, then chemistry professors must follow the laws of cause and effect too. But this logic can be applied in a reverse direction. ..If chemistry professors exercise choice, and chemistry professors are composed exclusively of atoms, then it follows that atoms must exercise choice too. The difference between these two points of view is philosophic, not scientific. The question of whether and electron does a certain thing because it has to or because it wants to is completely irrelevant to the data of what the electron does." You also confuse "causes" with "causality", which is like confusing reasons and motives and agency with the laws of physics. If you believe in human freedom, for example, then your own human agency is the cause of your actions, as opposed to your actions being just one more link in the chain of causality. The most basic operative terms seem to be way more than you can handle. As a result, you are still waiting at the starting line and have not even begun to discuss the issue. You are completely lost, so much so that your questions are ridiculous nonsense. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
