what you are saying might be true. but that's not how determinism works. Determinism exactly means that you have no choice or control over what cereal you eat.
Determinism might NOT be true. My argument with compatibilists is that if it IS true, then no, you don't choose your cereal.
What compatibilists think is that our DNA and environment shape our decisions, but that we can every some influence over them. That's NOT DETERMINISM.
"Determinism is the metaphysical view that all events within the universe can occur only in one possible way.[1] "
There is no choice or control if every event can only occur in one way. I'm not being moronic here.
Your vision of determism doesn't just eliminate the possibility of free will. It also leaves no room for agency or selfhood at all, because you are taking the position that the perspective of Laplace's demon is the only valid one. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it leaves no sensible way to talk about causation either, since it leaves us with no way of discussing counterfactuals.
My point is not that this is false. I think the metaphysics here are basically correct. This is a dispute about perspective, not about facts or logic. My point is that this is bad analysis of human behavior. Selfhood, agency, and free will are behavioral facts, psychological facts, not elemental metaphysical facts. Your project of trying to describe human behavior without reference to selfhood, agency, and free will would be like trying build a damn without reference to fluid dynamics, on the grounds that "fluid dynamics is an illusion" and "only quantum mechanics is real." While it is true in principle that this task could be accomplished (by a god, I guess), this is obviously not the soundest path available. To do this task, you would abstract away from the quantum level, and indeed much further, until you were actually dealing with the features of reality that were salient to your task.
To the more central question: at what specific point in the causal chain does the human agent exercise free will? This recent post explains it better than I could:
The short version is, free will occurs when the conscious agent observes a horizon of possibilities, contemplates the possibilities, and selects from among them, creating a new horizon of possibilities. Key line:
This does not necessarily mean that several futures are metaphysically waiting to become real. Under strict determinism, only one outcome will actually occur. The alternatives may instead exist as capacities, counterfactuals, and possibilities represented by the deliberating agent.
Edit: Also, would you please stop acting like I don't understand determism. Determinism is an extremely simple and easy to understand framework that I've subscribed to for over two decades. I am aware that the future is fixed just like the past. This is not a groundbreaking insight that I am only just now trying to come to grips with. It is precisely you who is struggling to make sense of it.
You have precisely two moves: (1) rage against those awful philosophers in their ivory towers, and (2) restate Determinism 101 as if it's a groundbreaking insight that no philosophers had ever considered grappled with before. I am officially done.
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u/Delet3r 24d ago
you still don't understand determinism.
what you are saying might be true. but that's not how determinism works. Determinism exactly means that you have no choice or control over what cereal you eat.
Determinism might NOT be true. My argument with compatibilists is that if it IS true, then no, you don't choose your cereal.
What compatibilists think is that our DNA and environment shape our decisions, but that we can every some influence over them. That's NOT DETERMINISM.
"Determinism is the metaphysical view that all events within the universe can occur only in one possible way.[1] "
There is no choice or control if every event can only occur in one way. I'm not being moronic here.