Repressive Tolerance

How should society be organised, if at all?

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Belinda
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Re: Repressive Tolerance

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:52 pm
Belinda wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 8:16 pm It may be objected that more knowledge and better judgement does not imply goodness.This is true. However there is a larger probability a person will be good if they are well informed and have sound judgement.
Not quite the point, but okay.

I wish there were an easy relationship between intelligence and integrity, but I fear that life teaches us there is not. That is not the point.

However, the real point is this: does not knowing your are the thrall of predetermining forces mean that one is no longer a thrall of predetermining forces, and thus volitionally free.

And the answer to that, of course, is "no." If the Determinists were right, it would make absolutely no difference whether you and I knew that Determinism is true, or, on the other hand, whether we were blissfully ignorant of the same fact.

The only thing that would make an actual difference is if Determinism is, in fact, not true. Which, I suggest, is the case.
Someone who is aware they are a prisoner in the Cave is a little more free, relatively more free, to be good than someone who is unaware they are a prisoner of circumstances. At least the person who is aware they know nothing does not have to get rid of vanity before they may begin to seek a better truth.

Volition, or will, does not in itself imply freedom. Volition, or will, is determined by circumstances such as innate curiosity, innate ability to remember experiences and learn from them, and good health which tends o give the energy to learn from experience.

There is no Belinda B that controls Belinda A . Belinda A is all there is. However Belinda A can learn from experience and thus she tries to have more and better choices and become more free. There is an important difference between fatalism and determinism.
Walker
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Re: Repressive Tolerance

Post by Walker »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:40 pm
Walker wrote: Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:27 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jan 16, 2021 6:31 pm For a Determinist, Picasso's Guernica or Shakespeare's sonnets were as inevitable as the rock that fell off a mountain on Tuesday. Both had nothing to do with actual volition, creativity, personhood or freedom. All that is illusion. They were mere products of prior forces; and the fact that you don't know the prior forces in question doesn't make them less absolute. Not everything that happens, after all, is known by us.

Anyway, that's their argument. I don't believe it, but I do understand their rationale.
- This is the first I’ve read this thread, but:

- That doesn’t make sense.
Well, be sure you don't overlook my last line above, W.

The first thing you need to understand here, then, is that the above summary is not what I believe: it's a summary of what Determinists who follow the logic of their Determinism have to believe. That's quite an important distinction.

So if you feel you want to object, it's got to be either that a) the Determinists are incorrect, or b) that you suppose my summarization of what their logic has to be lacks some feature, or fails to represent the logic of their position in some way.

You can object to them, or you can object to me, in other words: but you can't object to both at the same time, by means of the same argument, since Determinists and I do not share these views in common.

Fair enough?

So now, which objection are you making: a) or b)?
Hello,

My interest is not scholarly; so my interest is not what Determinism says, or what you say it says, or if what you say it says is correct, or whether or not you agree with what you say it says.

I was addressing the way things are.

If Determinism agrees, then it’s correct.

The way things are:
- Picasso in all his complexity is an element comprising the situation in which Guernica was inevitably created.
- Same goes for Shakespeare and his adventures.
- This means that the actual volition, creativity, personhood or freedom that you reference are necessary elements which comprise their compounded art, because these are elements comprising each of the artists.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Repressive Tolerance

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:12 am Someone who is aware they are a prisoner in the Cave is a little more free, relatively more free, to be good than someone who is unaware they are a prisoner of circumstances. At least the person who is aware they know nothing does not have to get rid of vanity before they may begin to seek a better truth.
Perhaps. But an iron cage is an iron cage. The walls of Determinism do not simply disappear if the prisoner denies they're there.
Volition, or will, does not in itself imply freedom.

Actually, it does.

If there's no actual freedom, then what you think of as "volition" is no more than "delusion."
There is an important difference between fatalism and determinism.
Several differences. "Fate" is a fictive concept, for one thing, and is held mythologically but not rationally. But Determinism is not so easily debunkable.

Ironically, Determinism is rational in the sense that past its first premise, all the steps of logic it follows do validly lead where it says they do -- but but that first premise (Materialism, Physicalism) is its weakness. Its "premise 1' is false. And though the form of the argument that ensues is rational, the conclusion is still unsound because of that faulty first premise.

So the argument for Determinism looks something like this:

Premise 1: All that exists in the universe are material forces, plus the laws that govern them.
Premise 2: Volition is a phenomenon within the universe.
Conclusion: Volition is nothing more than an expression of material forces and laws.


That's rationally valid in form, but ultimately unsound in content. The reason? Premise 1 is false.
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