For example, if it was inevitable that you killed someone, then it also is inevitable that you should be killed. It works quite nicely into the idea of retributive justice. After all, if those are the rules then the result of breaking the rules is inevitable.
You seem to think that the concept of inevitability is something new, and that you can assign it whatever meaning you wish. And, since it was inevitable, there was nothing anyone could do about it. Some people are just lucky I guess. And the lucky deserve what they get due to their luckiness. And the unlucky deserve what they get due to their unluckiness. After all, such was their fate since the Big Bang! So we just should let things be as they are.
If things were meant to be different, then they would be different. You, however, are just making up non-sense. This is why we need to keep going from the very pedantic basics rather than jump way ahead like you are here. For example, I like how you answered my question: in quotes as some mixed up fatalist not even a fatalist would say what you said and not yourself. So I question if that is truly your answer, or if you are being sarcastic.
Some people even conclude that if everything is inevitable we no longer have the freedom to choose anything for ourselves. Silly, I know, but some people draw such irrational conclusions from deterministic inevitability. Even supposedly great physicists like Einstein and philosophers like Spinoza have gone down that rabbit hole.
I kinda wish they were here too, so I could explain it to them. And I just checked Wiki, the Roman goddess Fortuna also controlled your fate.
Either gods or abstract concepts like luck or fate controlled your destiny. I was demonstrating how fatalism arises in some minds from the idea of deterministic inevitability.
Attempting to draw meaningful implication from inevitability leads to mental errors. Fatalism is one of those mental errors. My question: Everyone is familiar with the fact that we are shaped in part by genetics and in part by our environment and culture. Since the idea of external influences is already well established, what do you expect to change by insisting upon inevitability rather than simple cause and effect? They have no choice in the matter of what happens.
They can let things be, or not let thing be, and per fatalism what they were destined will come to be. In fact just the opposite. No one is more deserving of winning the lottery than another, just because they happen to win. If you need to, go back to the rules of this discourse. I want to avoid semantic games. So I will ask you the question once again, and please answer without using something tantamount to a religious parable.
Do you agree that, if a person becomes a billionaire avoids poverty and obtains great wealth , and if another person is unable to gain any real wealth and remains poor avoids wealth gain , that such avoidance and obtainment , even before either person was even born, was unavoidable?
We can simply address what cause and effect means for our decisions. I need to stop us at this point. Once again we have gone off on tangents and away from the Socratic method. Can you keep within the constraints of this procedure? Here are the rules again if needed:. You may pick any event you like, and the answer is the same. However, it also remains also true that, for any event in which an autonomous person is the final responsible cause, that event is within the control of that person, such as he is at that time.
The problem is the harm done by the shooting and how to deterministically prevent future harms by the same causes. He can be restrained either in prison or a secure mental facility against his will in order to prevent further shootings.
Next, we have the diagnosis of a brain tumor. If the brain tumor compromises his judgment, then the corrective operation may also take place against his will. Finally, after the tumor is removed, it may be that additional corrective actions are required, because it may turn out that other people with a similar tumor did not go on a shooting spree.
So, back to your question. And, assuming Whitman was a good and ethical person prior to the growth of the tumor, then the tumor is the most relevant cause of the shooting.
However, it is the same bad acts, whether sane or not, that justify corrective actions to protect society. It is just the mode of correction that differs prison or mental facility. You are getting way ahead of yourself again, this question is not addressing how the person should be treated after the event at all, it asks specifically about the event itself.
I need to, once again, bring you back on track. Leaping ahead is not productive — remember — we need to move slowly here. Whitman, as he was at the time, was in control of the shooting. His brain tumor was part of who he was. His feelings of compulsion were also part of who he was. Even his insanity was part of who he was at the time of the shooting. His own hands loaded the gun and pulled the trigger. In the absence of Whitman, the shootings would never have occurred.
The final cause of the deaths was obviously Whitman pulling the trigger. Yes or No no further elaboration needed. So perhaps this should be my next question:. Imagine a guy with a brain tumor that pushed on his brain in a way that compelled him to not do what the gunman the man pointing the gun to his head demanded. Well, context is everything. For example, suppose we have two scenarios. A In one scenario the guy with the gun to your head hijacks you and your car, requiring you to assist his escape.
B In the other scenario, the guy with the gun to your head puts a gun in your hand and tells you to blow the brains out of a third person.
It may be reasonable to allow him to force you to assist in his escape but not reasonable for you to kill an innocent person to save your own life. So, what part of the brain is programmed to carry out a mass shooting when pressed? I imagine it would be like hunger, where you sense the need to eat something, but the rest of the mind has to concoct the specific plan to make a sandwich. Both the gunman and the victim are physically in control of their own actions.
However the threat of being shot coerces the victim to act against his will. It depends on how the presumptions of your question line up with the presumptions of my answer.
I hope my answer clarifies my presumptions for you. A Deciding to do what the gunman says in order to not be shot.
B Deciding not to do what the gunman says with the chance of being shot. Context: Pragmatism is about what is useful or helpful to reach a goal or objective. The goal of morality is to achieve the best good and least harm for everyone. Perhaps you should send me the script so I know what my part is.
YES or NO? And that is because Plato wrote the script for both sides of the dialogue. We can never assume that any individual is going to come up with the best answer. If a misinterpretation should arise, it can be pointed to at that time in which case we can analyze if it truly was a misinterpretation or if a detraction of something is required on either end.
Also, if there are any questions that later on you want to detract and go the other way with because of an initial language confusion or any other reason — please do say so. Per your assessment:. It preaches that we have no control, that all of our choices are already made for us, and that our will is only a rider on the bus being driven by inevitability.
Fatalism encourages apathy, destroys morale, discourages autonomy, and undermines moral responsibility. Fatalism is morally corrupting. This part is correct.
For determinism, it happens due to such. The point, however, is that free will is not a requirement to avoid fatalism. Both determinism and fatalism are equally as incompatible with free will. Determinism, however, should not lead to defeatism futility of conscious action , as it can be understood that conscious thoughts and actions are important cogs in the machine.
Tell me more. Trying to avoid semantic disagreements for now. The whole process is, of course, deterministic and the result is inevitable. Finally, there may be two scenarios: 1 the person may be free to do all of that autonomously for himself or 2 someone may override this process and force him to make a different choice and take a different action against his will authority: parent, teacher, cop, wife, guy with a gun, et cetera.
More than one conversation at a time is just confusing. I want to have focused questions and answers on the other thread. People generally know that their actions make a difference. Determinists are simply saying that we act on our desires to bring about the change we want to see in the world. We may succeed or fail in our efforts, but we did not choose to exist or have the desires we do. Thank you. Our conscious thoughts and actions are not ineffective or useless toward the future output. For fatalism they are, for determinism they are not.
Jump to navigation. Determinism holds that every thing and event is a natural and integral part of the interconnected universe. Every event is a confluence of influences. While determinism regards humans as "one with" the unfolding matrix of the natural universe, supernaturalism and fatalism regard humans as existing outside of this system.
Most humans are supernaturalists; they believe that humans have "free will" which causes events in the natural world but is not caused by them. And most humans will defend their "free will" without second thought to the evidence for or benefits of alternative explanations. Fatalism too is a supernatural belief system which holds humans outside the natural matrix.
But then we make things happen. Without us, they would not. A light switch is turned on. Electrical current is sent to the light globe. The light turns on.
Did the electrical current cause the light to go on? In one sense it did. Is it responsible for the light going on? Perhaps in one sense that is correct too. But does the electrical current have any control over the situation? Over the light or over itself? If it wanted to, could it not turn on the light, given the light switch is turned from off to on? In this sense the current has no freedom, no causal agency, no control. You lack control if you cannot determine your own actions, that is it is inevitable that you will follow one course of action.
To support your thesis would grant control to just about anything. If a hammer breaks then it will affect the future of my carpentry, thus the hammer has a degree of control over itself and my future. What I think you are suggesting is related to personal identity, that say if the electricity was self-aware that it could be proud of itself for its actions.
However if it kept watching the person flip the switch and then itself continually and inevitably travelling to the light globe, this feeling of ownership would vanish over time. The electricity can find no comfort in knowing that if it acted differently it would be responsible for changing the future. Posted by Illusive Mind.
Good point. I probably should have said: you lack control if your decisions lack causal power. Here one needs to be careful in their understanding of 'decision' - I intend it to apply to us even in a deterministic universe. But of course it doesn't apply to electric currents. The key difference, as I see it, is that our brains engage in computation of decision-procedures cognitive algorithms which in turn guide our actions.
I think that's enough to provide a legitimate sense of self-ownership and responsibility. It is a tricky question though, for sure.
Again, I highly recommend Jason's post on evil robots , which I think is extremely helpful here. Posted by Richard. Visitors: check my comments policy first. Non-Blogger users: If the comment form isn't working for you, email me your comment and I can post it on your behalf. If your comment is too long, first try breaking it into two parts.
Providing the questions for all of life's answers. The initial dissatisfaction many people feel towards determinism may be largely due to their conflating it with a notions of pre-destination, fate, or destiny.
First, the notion of 'purpose'. I simply want to emphasise that determinism has none. Those other quasi-religious notions are all built around the idea of events leading up to some inevitable goal which must be realised no matter what.
Determinism, by contrast, has no inherent goals, it's just the way things are. Sure, it means that future states are inevitable given the past states and the laws of nature, but there is no personal driving force behind it all, no God or gods imposing their will upon us hapless mortals. I think that's an important distinction to bear in mind.
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