Skwim
Veteran Member
We are a product of all the cause/effect events that have impinged on us up to the present moment.Kathryn said:This is amazing. But so convenient! "We can't help anything that we do." "We are a product of our environment."
Just as I explained in the OP.How does this work in "real life?"
I have. Because they have upset me. I had no choice in the matter.Haven't you ever been angry at anyone? If so, why? Isn't that hypocritical?
See, you knew the answer all along.If people can't help being rude to you, why be angry at them? Oh wait - is it because you simply can't help being angry?
Yes.A few years ago I lost fifty pounds. I did this by going against every sort of automatic desire I had. It took great self control and small but difficult choices every single day for a year. Was this inevitable? Are you saying I really had no choice in this?
Like all judgment words, evil has arisen because we needed a word to express our perception of something, ill founded as it may be in light of our deterministic world.People aren't evil? Charles Manson isn't evil? The man who abducted Elizabeth Smart isn't evil?
Bingo!Are you saying they didn't make choices? Are you saying they couldn't help themselves?
I await your case.Mestemia said:Seems to me you present a false dichotomy.
Recall that I saidHowever, one needs for you to further clarify by what you mean by "choice".
"Free will is an illusion. But before going into why, we first need to get rid of the term "choice" because it assumes to be true the condition under consideration, freedom to do what we want. So no use of "choice," "choosing,"chosen," or any other form of the word."
The notion of choice and choosing is rooted in perception that we are "equally able," which would be an exercise of free will, to select one or the other(s). The truth is when we do select a particular "option" and not the other it's because . . . . There was a reason (cause) that led to our action and not the other. To have selected the other the cause/effect chain would have had to be different, but it wasn't so we ended up selecting what we did.Seems to me that one almost always has a choice and that you are merely excusing the choice by declaring that certain past experiences dictate certain choices.
Perhaps I am missing something?
Exactly!UltraViolet said:Well then, things are exactly as they must be.
First of all, I haven't responded to your previous statements because LuisDantas has been doing a pretty good job of that. As for your comment here; as I pointed out in my OP I see "two ways actions take place; completely randomly, or caused." Actions includes all acts, even thoughts and those that are unconscious. So when one's conscious arrives at a decision regarding anything, just how did it do so? Was it a mere random act; it could just as easily decided something altogether different? Or was their a reason that your conscience arrived where it did? I say the latter is true. And the reason your conscious decided on (A) rather than (B), (C), (D), or (E) happens to be the cause of it. Your conscience was caused to end up with the decision it did because all the cause/effect events leading up to it prevented it from reaching another decision. It had to do what it did.bobhikes said:Decisions are all made by current conscience thought.
Can you prove conscience is deterministic.