Free will an absurdity
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And despite that, there are many good peoples within the religious movement, and many of them are much better peoples than some so called socialists. We wrote an article about the Jehovah Witness and they are good peoples who do not support wars, racism, and killings and there are a bunch of atheists who are the opposite. I knew many good priests who dedicated their life to the peoples in their communities
All true. And there are many who think they are materialists but are not. They do not analyse their own feelings and thoughts and what lies behind them. If you have a thought or feeling, you should be able to follow it back, for a while, through its antecedents.
Nothing springs from nothing.
I have no problem with a Christian believing in free will, because i know they are obliged to. I would wonder why they are a Christian if they did not.
My problem is with inconsistency, such as avowed materialists ignorantly standing by idealist concepts.‘They do not analyse their own feelings and thoughts and what lies behind them. If you have a thought or feeling, you should be able to follow it back, for a while, through its antecedents.
Nothing springs from nothing.’
TM – You make it sound easy. Repression and the inability ‘analyze their own feelings’ lies at the root of all reactionary ideology.
I’m referring to proponents here of a free will, not expecting people generally to retrace their thoughts and feelings.
One can only retrace for a little bit anyway. It is sufficient to admit that every feeling and thought springs from what precedes it. That’s easy enough.Needless to say, a fragrance or a piece of music can elicit the same feelings they accompanied decades previously, and bring back the memory immediately to mind of a particular moment.
Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
‘It is sufficient to admit that every feeling and thought springs from what precedes it. That’s easy enough.’
That would appear to be an extremely naïve statement psychologically. Free will or, for that matter, any other ideological component might well derive from completely unconnected trauma. The desperate and illusory need for control could lead to the ideological clinging to the concept of free will. Many times any link or coherent relationship between ideas and feelings will be broken. There’s nothing ‘easy’ about the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind.
Which only, again, shows the absurdity of any free will.
One will not know that which is subconscious, but one can trace the rise of conscious feelings and thoughts from immediate antecedents. In therapy it is done all the time, and what is subconscious can be rendered conscious.
Anyone would think free will is a valid subject for debate, because the notion offers no substance. And, as i have said time and time again, complexity only proves even more the fallacy of the free will myth.
Nothing new is being offered here; just repetition, forcing me too into repetition of what has already been said, over and over, on this thread.
Please go back and read Cde. Currey’s article again, instead of just showing a desperate determination to rescue the ridiculous notion of free will. Why socialists are so desperate to do so really puzzles me.
These exchanges seem to have the one object of scoring points rather than thinking about the matter, or even bothering to read the messages on the thread, which, of course, explains the endless repetition of the same questions and answers.
” .. the most vital argument that the Socialist advances against free will is that its acceptance precludes the possibility of a science of sociology. The Socialist expounds the principle of laws acting behind social causation. If man, individually and en masse, is a creature of caprice, if he thinks and acts independently of his heredity and social milieu, then the search for laws supposed to govern human history, economics and social relations is forever doomed to futility. The acceptance of free will is a flat denial of social science.”
THE WESTERN SOCIALIST.
Presumably the problem of human moral agency has been addressed? If it has then ignore the following. One of the major problems with advocating determinism and the denial of free will has always been the removal of individual moral responsibility. Can we absolve Hitler of moral responsibility by reference to his childhood etc.? As a fellow materialist/determinist I reject the theory of free will but am unable to resolve this particular problem. Perhaps we have to make a presumption of moral agency in the full knowledge that it doesn’t exist for the sake of social cohesion?
There need be no contradiction here.
Morality is a social construct. The morality of a socialist society would be to leave everyone free to do what is not harmful to another.
You pick Hitler (but you may equally pick Truman or Pol Pot or any other notorious person). While recognising someone has become what they are from a multitude of social and personal factors, one still hates and despises them and would have the moral duty to restrain them.
We know capitalism produces war, and produces tyrants. If we turn down a notch to lower the profile to, say,an average person … If someone in a socialist society were to run rampage, killing people etc., we would know they are sick. That does not mean we let them rampage. If they cannot be stopped without violence, then we would use violence. But the object of our violence would be to stop them, not to punish them.
If someone is motivated to hurt others then that should motivate us to render that impossible by restraining them. We don’t pass moral judgment and sentence them. Once they are restrained and rendered harmless, that would be it. If they need to be restrained indefinitely, so be it. But that does not mean we take vengeance on them.
This is a summary of PF Strawson’s “Freedom annd Resentment” I put a link to the full article a few posts back.
“Although the central issues involved in the problem of free will and moral responsibility have remained the same since ancient times, the emphasis of the debate has changed greatly. Contemporary compatibilists in the vein of Frankfurt and Strawson tend to argue that moral responsibility has little if anything to do with determinism, since it arises from people’s desires and attitudes rather than from the causal origins of their actions. Humans may not be free to as great an extent as the intuitive notion of free will suggests, but there is no other freedom to be had. Addressing the problem of free will and moral responsibility requires establishing guidelines for holding people accountable, not lunging after some impossible notion of free will.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/free-will-and-moral-responsibility/CompatibilismThe necessarian can hold people accountable without accepting they have free will.
People’s desires and feelings are just as much part of the chain of causation as are their actions.
One may be motivated more to hold back from punching someone in the face than motivated to do so. It feels thereby that your will was faced with a choice. In fact, it could but yield to the motive which proved the strongest.
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