Thomas_More
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I meant a religious person*, an idealist, or anyone not interested in history might be sick of wage-labour, wars, famine, global devastation, and like the sound of our message. If they agree with our object, why can’t they join us?
My gripe is with the inconsistency of those talking about the materialist conception of history, and then affirming free will, which makes nonsense of their “materialism.”
If you believe in free will, don’t pretend to materialism and insult the great materialist thinkers thereby.*Of course, not a religious fanatic, because those have no love, care or interest in the Earth or of life upon it. But most people who believe in a god and in free will are not fanatics. They are, in fact, just most people.
” is the socialist equivalent of how many angels you can get on the point of a pin.”
Only because you lot won’t drop the adjective “free.”
If one doesn’t believe in free will, why go along with the popular but meaningless use of the term? Used thus, what does it mean? It means nothing. It’s loose language, and that leads to loose thinking.
Funny why we all
insist on the correct interpretation of the word socialism then! Since loose terminology is fine.You would need to demonstrate that you are a socialist for no reason. That you did not become one, but just are one.
You would need to demonstrate that you only have feelings and thoughts you want to have. That you will to will.
Funny that you’d be a socialist then!
It would invalidate the materialist conception of history, if the mind were independent of motive.
“Free will is a flat denial of social science.”
(Western Socialist).Necessarians have even been more stringent in backing deterrent, preventative, measures against malefactors than free willies have been, which would horrify Godwin.
Whilst being a Necessarian, and knowing that guilt and punishment are unphilosophical, Hobbes supported the ultimate punishment – the death penalty – not as punishment, but as deterrence. If a deterrence, as he believed, it fitted in with his necessarian outlook.
Today, of course, we know it is not a deterrence; that in fact more murders result following executions. So the necessarian argument cannot be used to justify the death penalty.Knowing that choice is motivated, not free, is what has us doing political work to influence minds: trying our best to nudge the chain of causation, of which we are all part, in the direction of socialism.
Fortunately, our work is not alone. Many strands unconsciously support our efforts, as does capitalism’s inability to solve the problems it creates.
” We are more than the sum of materialism and mechanical psychology: we are the sum of that and so much more!”
As i’ve just said, there is more than just the mechanical. But this only makes freedom of the will more ludicrous a notion, since there is so much going on, so many more antecedents in play.
I would say to the drunken driver (because acts have consequences) that, far from the chain of causation being an excuse, it is because it leads him to drive drunk and endanger life, we must remove his access to a vehicle and ensure he doesn’t drive again. If that involves physically isolating him, which he may bemoan as being “punishment”, then so be it. We have to prevent you. It’s the chain of causation.
Anyone saying the will is free is saying his choices are not bound by cause and effect (the chain of causation), but are free and independently made (their own first cause).
In fact, the intricacies of the mind we know about today, with all its subconscious and conscious movements, make the notion of feelings, thoughts and choices being free even more ludicrous than in the days of the mechanical materialists.
” nor does party “exclude non-materialists” as you alleged.”
It doesn’t?
So, if one believes in a non-material soul, and rejects historical materialism, they can join?Which they do anyway, because members there are who believe choices are not bound by cause and effect, but are free; that therefore they are made by an independent “self” not subject to cause and effect.
“…could be infringed with impunity by invoking some clever dick argument like “I was only a link in a chain of causation”?”
Which, from the start, has been you putting words in my mouth.
I said such a person would need to be restrained. How many times do I have to repeat things to you, including my necessarian arguments, just because you must have the last word. You’re like a child.
