RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 5:01 pm
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:20 pm
It's a conundrum: the causal agent movin' as he chooses thru the agglutinate of causal chains that is Reality.
It's only a conundrum if you assume everything is only determined by physical principles.
I think we have to make the key distinction here: to say that many things follow strictly physical laws, but some don't, is no form of Determinism. It's what any free-willer believes. And to say that people "determine" things is only to use the word as a synonym for "make up their minds firmly"; it's unrelated to Determinism.
Determinism is a complete Monism: in all its forms, only one thing, force or rule governs everything and is the ultimate explanation of every phenomenon. If there were two forces involved in how the world works, then NEITHER of them could be called "Determinative." Rather, each would subvert the conclusive Determinative role of the other.
Physicalist Determinism insists only physical forces explain everything that happens.
There are other forms of Determinism.
But any form of Determinism is going to have to insist that if it's not physical forces that are Determinative, then the physical forces are themselves
determined by something else, like perception (Mystical Determinism) or a particularly autocratic "god" (Calvinism). But Determinism does not, in any of its forms, allow for more than one Ultimate Determinant. The rest, it has to insist, is only (as Henry says) "hooey," a misunderstanding of things that are still subject to the Ultimate Determinant.
So "will" is just another delusion, a result of human failure to understand that they were all really predetermined to do what they did anyway. (that's Compatibilism's flaw: it says "will" but means "physical forces" when it does).
While it must be true that the behavior of all merely physical entities is determined (described by) physical principles, it is equally true that for a very tiny number of physical entities there is another principle that makes them unique. It's called life.
You can say so.
But if you do, then you just stopped being a Determinist at all, and became a Dualist, if you ever were a Determinist at all. This is because your statement claims there are two forces: "physical principles," is one; "life" is the other. That is, unless you subsume "life" to the "physical principles," in which case your statement is wrong -- there is no actual determinant of anything but the "physical forces," and you can be a Determinist again.
Which did you mean?
While the physical aspects of an organism are determined as all merely physical things are, those aspects of an organism's behavior which we call living is not determined by physical principles but is made possible by them.
Dualism again. The either the "physical forces" are behind will, or else they are not: but if they are not, then "will" is a distinct category of causal agency, and Determinism isn't true.
So really, you're a Dualist?