What if they taught determinism in school directly instead of going through its applied ways (sciences of nature such as physics, mathematics etc), would it create excess rebellious positions among the population? Without the spook of free-will, you can't justify to the working-class they have no hope of salvation as a class as long as they keep recognizing the bourgeoisie. You can't praise the "merits" of people who integrate themselves within the economical/political structure, nor can you blame others for not succeeding in school or refusing to take part in the competition.
Determinism, that is asserting our desires such as opinions etc. are structurally determined, is in fact a very liberating ideology. You finally have some kind of framework to apply to sciences, natural or social, that works. Because philosophers of all times were very spooked about free-will themselves, except for a handful of them, such as Spinoza, Marx, Hegel, Democrites, Bourdieu, Durkheim, etc. this mentality which used to be very prevalent in ancient greece ended up erased from most of the history of thought due to copying monks who systemically purged mention of predestination, because it disagreed with the catholic concept of original sin and couldn't therefore be used to instill fear and obedience into the hell-fearing, deeply religious masses of the middle-ages, modern and contemporary periods.
Anyway, understanding of our determination is how the only genuine human freedom can be achieved. This reflexion should be the base for a political force of an entirely different design than anything that's been done before.
Also be careful with who you use this truth with, it can literally drive people insane trying to cling to their own cognitive dissonance.
What if they taught determinism in school directly instead of going through its applied ways (sciences of nature such...
Also please note this would re-integrate man within the scope of the entire universe, where things obey deterministic laws.
Quantum mechanics don't disagree with causality, if you consider the observer as a deterministic system in and by itself.
It is in a way but we can't access that, so that makes this statement meaningless. A comprehensive simulation of the universe itself might as well be the universe itself and couldn't be contained by the universe itself anyway. Therefore we cannot just say everything is predetermined and can be figured with big enough computers, there are obvious calculability issues that are purely theoretical and not just arising from limited technical tools.
However, disciplines such as long-term demography, history, sociology, philosophy can themselves try to adopt a deterministic stance regarding human activity and deduce significant and meaningful things.
No. You can't predict what it would be anyway. Knowledge of our determinations is how you achieve meaningful action. If I have more knowledge about things, I know how they will behave, not to eat that mushroom or not to walk under the cliff where rocks fall from. If I get hit in the head by a rock, it would be silly to blame the rock since it detached itself from the cliff only due to natural laws that are applied all the time everywhere, such as universal gravitation or the laws of geology, meteorology if wind and rain helped etc. Why would I be upset at a cloud for raining?
This is the same for man, although we humans are more complex than rocks, we are not made of any different stuff if you look close enough.
What does this mean for the left?
It means that we can integrate the ecological disaster in the longer trend of history, considered under a deterministic viewpoint. Could we have avoided the industrial revolution? No. Then we couldn't have avoided the intense growth of industry up until today. So the catastrophy we're going through has been determined long ago and needs to be thought in the wider perspective of human history. We need to think of modernity in intelligent and accurate terms to make sense of all this.
Also, it means we should embrace the fact porkies have entirely rational reasons to act the way they do, just like anyone else. But their desires and power, are determined by social structures that enable and encourage them to adopt antisocial and psychopathic behaviour. The left should acknowledge this and erase once and for all the socdem mentality of "oh we need to make capitalism human, moralize people about ecology, we need some kind of new consciousness arising etc" which is precisely the kind of talk that achieves nothing.
You know I'm not very knowledgeable but I can smell shit when it is just too stupid. Aristotle was in fact a defensor of free will that thought nature was deterministic while man was non deterministic at all (man as the power of opposites). Stoic philosophy narrowed space for contingency and in fact christianity did too: if god was all knowleadgeable then it existed a predetermined future god already knew. Neverthless medievals were aristotelic and believed in free will so it was a half determinism.
Then came the reform and the reformers were hellbent determinists, like, luther wrote a book called de servo arbitrio, literally the serf will, as a response to the catholic erasmus from rotterdam, and calvin literally believed in predestination so no, it was not a "handful of philosophers" that believed in determinism, it was a hell of a lot of them in the 16th century and onward, Hobbes was a pure determinist too (a big influence on spinoza) and the anti deterministic main response came from descartes, it was not some kind of enlightened reality for a minority of super brained philosophers, it was a common point of debate and very much of a reality for a lot of even lower class people (the lutheran or calvinian protestants).
Also if I do not remember incorrectly Marx thought determinism was a dead end.
Never said free-will didn't have its own defenders. Epicurian thinkers thought we have free-will and their philosophy was not worse than that of stoicists who were determinists. It's not so simple of a division. But the fact is we have no epicurean texts left, only two letters of Epicurus and the natura rerum.
Also you need to understand the catholic church has always had a very ambiguous stance on determinism. Omnipotent creator god means I'm bound to God's will. But then why am I being sent to hell if I misbehave? This stirred a lot of trouble in the catholic church well before protestantism, various heresies were deterministic or we can mention the Jansenists in France, who re-read St. Augustine.
If you read Marx's university thesis, it's about the differences in philosophy between epicurus and democrites specifically on that question. Marx sides with Epicurus in this, the greek philosopher said there was a deviation (clinamen) in the way atoms fall that could justifiy free-will.
Anyway, my point regarding Marx is that he constituted, much like Hegel, long-term human trends as objects of knowledge. The materialist methodology of history means one can think human history as a scientific object rather than a sequence of contingencies caused by the "free sovereign will" of men.
fair. Sorry for attacking you. I am inclined to determinism myself and I especially agree with the latter part of this post but with my extremely limited philosophical knowledge I can't help but being open to question determinism.
Fair enough, I'm not upset or anything. I think it's a very interesting part of philosophy that neatly branches out into politics, social sciences and natural sciences so the more general knowledge you have, not just in philosophy, the better.
IMO the most interesting part is when you wonder what does it make of your decisions. Basically you are the sum of your entire past, your memories etc and you only have so much information at any point to make choices. Even things like feelings of rage, anger, envy can determine your choices and these do not escape causality either. If this interests you, check out lectures on Spinoza's theory of affect.
I'll surely do when I have less shit to study, thanks
This was something that solidified my preexisting inclination against dualism regarding the question of free will vs. predestination back in my late teens.
Yes, the steady advance of scientific understanding has more and more tightly nailed down objective mechanical laws for the universe (and there is no particular indication quantum mechanics will ultimately be an exception to this trend), but each new discovery only raises many times more questions, demonstrating the probably infinite complexity of the universe.
From these trends, it seems nearly inescapable to conclude that the universe is predestined, and without dualism that obviously includes us. But, if there is no practical way that this information about destiny could 'possibly be exploited, let alone known, is the question even significant?
No, in practical terms, at least to the extent factors that shape our decisions can't be measured or modeled, we effectively have free will.
Learning how to shape causality is the name of engineering and how to describe its modalities of application is science. Also it can be used as an axiom to develop a better psychological model of man that does away with free-will, which is ultimately an asylum of ignorance. Read Spinoza. Also it can be used for self-acceptance, not judging others (I'd have done the same mistake if I were them) and so on.
To be clear, I am strongly confident of predestination being true, but I am equally confident of the free will question having zero practical consequences for the human experience.
Isn't this a meaningless distinction?
But we are ignorant of the physical mechanisms behind psychology. Until we've reverse-engineered the human brain enough to create "strong"/"general" AI, the "black box" in our heads can't be characterized in any way meaningfully different from free will. And even then, the inherent unpredictability of the universe as a whole will, through our need to react to it, cause us to remain substantially unpredictable.
We don't actually *need* knowledge of the physical mechanisms behind psychology even if these were accessible. What we need is to figure out how to formulate a model of the human mind that accurately reflects its inner workings without idealizing it and figure out how to leverage this model to significantly increase the efficiency of political action in our collective yet objective personal interest.
Sure, a model doesn't have to correspond to the underlying phenomenon in order to produce useful predictions (Bohr's "planets and suns" orbital atomic physics, still useful as a simple illustrative model, for instance), but we don't have anything even vaguely resembling useful models in psychology.
Well, some attempts have been made in philosophy and I think Spinoza's is actually very interesting, especially when applied to social science, contemporary research would agree with me. Also the field of history has undergone very intense changes in methodology during the past century and nowadays there is a much greater emphasis on structural and conjonctural change over the past which essentially tried to talk about events.
(lucky trips!)
It's possible, given tremendous advances in neurology, sufficient amounts of high quality data, and entirely cross-disciplinary breakthroughs, that something truly reliable like the Seldon Foundation's psychohistory might be invented. But as of yet the humanities (psychology, history, anthropology, economics, etc.) remain mere activities of culture, rather than hard scientific tools.
Yawn
Well there's to say that humanities are pretty late in the process of "scientificization", physics was born in the XVII century, other stuff like chemistry in the XVIII while even the humanity sciencies that started earliest in the process of more serious methodology did this by the XIX century. Also these sciences are much much more difficult to interpret and have "scientific" criteria applied (one example the fouret-stone debate regarding quantitative history vs narrative history), they are more subject to lies and distortion by political and economic powers and in general usually have less serious academic realities.
OP you're my favorite poster.
What's your preferred political strategy? What social institution(s) should we focus on as a class in our struggle? Is statecraft the engineered domain of the capitalist class, beyond the pale of what Marx was able to consider in his day? Since he died the post-WWII era of globalized corporatism (mixed economies) have taken shape and capitalist power have only entrenched, now aided by a highly rationalized bureaucratic strata crushing the working class via tools of law, police, surveillance, et al. By contrast to the strategy of orthodox Marxism, which contain ideological defense of riding the socdem electoral carousel, what do you think of the strategies of left-communists (thinking ICC), autonomists or Communalists who attempt to lay ground for organs of class rule outside the realm of the capitalists' national statecraft?
is this even possible? what do you mean by 'idealization' here?
Honestly if you guys want to discuss it further, we might as well do that in a specific place for that purpose. I'm gonna come back to this thread to discuss further points but I've been thinking this through for quite a while and I think it needs to be adressed in a further critic of modernity as a historical trend. I could even make a youtube channel or something so I can actually rant for 40+ minutes.
To a certain degree of accuracy, sure. I've devised more or less consciously one that I use for my interpersonal relations and I can already tell you that knowledge of Bourdieu & Spinoza are the great lines. Such a system would leave a very large part to structural & socially induced subjectivity. Socially induced subjectivity, although it is historically constructed, is very real affect/affection felt by the subject. I could give a lot of different examples here, but I think the french philosopher Frederic Lordon explained it much better than I could.
People usually try to design how "man should be" instead of "how man is". Idealization is basically trying to come up with an idealistic/perfect "natural" state and then try to see how this state relates to our world. Idealization would be for instance taking the aristotelician stance of asserting man as a rational being (zoôn politikon). Men can be rational but they also be completely driven by seemingly irrational forces such as anger, pride, sorrow etc. Spinoza avoids this issue, read Book III of Ethics.
Aren't you adorable?
Popular education. Giving intellectual tools & weapons to the people is the longest lasting blow you can bring to the bourgeoisie. The internet is making this historical force irrepressible if wielded intelligently.
Use social media, the internet to make our worldview compete with the hegemonic free-willist (= liberal) view of people being sovereign human beings all equal from birth, then equalizing to merit. Also ending once and for all guilt-fueled ecologism and instead question once and for all social reasons of global warming. Organize massive strikes, seize powers, halt free trade, disband the european union and instead form a confederation of states assisting each other for things like tourism, research, healthcare. We're basically heliocentrists in the era of Galileo Galilei. I've seen even philosophy teachers outright dismiss such a framework due to the fact it would align humans back on the level of animals. This is the kind of mentality you get from creationists who think "man can't be related to monkeys". Absolutely unbelievable that this is the unquestioned assumption of basically 99.9% of everyone in capitalist societies.
Masturbation is nice and all but please don't do it in public.
This is a meaningless statement. This is basically a claim that "quantum mechanics doesn't disagree with determinism if you assume beforehand that the universe is deterministic". Quantum mechanics has a wide variety of interpretations, and some are deterministic while some allow for free will.
This. The idea that the slot experiment explicitly implies the Copenhagen Interpretation is a common but false impression.
Are you planning to make a thought experiment that bans thought experiments?
Are you implying material conditions aren't degrading very quickly yet fail to find in leftist theory answers? Material conditions can bring fascism too, fyi.
Are you retarded? Religions tend to isolate man as a special unique bubble within the universe with its own laws. See religious opposition to darwin, galileo galilei etc. If anything, methodological determinism is an antireligious attitude since it states man can be studied just like any other object science observes.
Although that's a very nice anime pic, it does not replace valid points of criticism.
Honestly I'd rather not talk about quantum mechanics that much, given it lies outside of my relatively restricted domain of competence, as long as we admit you can't just say determinism is "disproven" by quantum physics like a lot of liberals do as a knee-jerk reaction. The whole point of the inb4 was to basically not waste too much time on this, given there is plenty of specialized literature online for those who care.
If anything, chaos theory shows extremely complex situations can arise from purely deterministic system. In my opinion, the very reason we have different sciences with no apparent theoretical unification is simply due to predictibility concerns, which are entirely different actual difference of substance of the object observed. Even extensive knowledge is physics is insufficient to analyze zoological phenomenons, in spite of the fact animals are indeed made of the same physical stuff our equations describe. This is also why thermodynamics choose to use statistical models, assuming that on a large enough scale, approximations compensate each other, which is true in the case of gas particle cinetics and allows thermodynamics to infer useful prediction and perform engineering tasks.
I claim man does not escape causality and should be treated as such. Our desires, beliefs and opinions are induced by a large variety of factors and looking at causes that determined our desires is the first step to genuine human freedom, that is actions that I am actually causing instead of being passive like a dead leaf flying on random winds.
related meme
Bump for thread about Materialism
Free will exists for the ☘️subject☘️ IE have fun in language-thought patterns that were shaped by Empire and self-shamed through the enlightenment
I only know how to address this through the 8 circuit model. All of politics is the control over 2d space and is in the thalamus and has been with us for 1000 million years. Anything below the 6th circuit, or throat chakra or left frontal neocortex appears as free will. At the 6th plane you become the metaprogrammer. Etc etc read RAW
How many levels of schizophrenia are you on my dude
He's right in that certain drugs take you to a mental space where you can take a real step back from yourself and address your own thought patterns more or less objectively, or at least reveal culture to be painfully relative. Plenty of people have dropped other drug habits such as nicotine or opiates from an intense psychedelic encounter. Try it sometime my dude.
Spinoza is a meme. and by me saying this will get a bunch of your code messed up and you'll become hostile.
your place you end up is only "determined" by the free will you are given at first. if you don't do anything, nothing happens.
I know a bunch of you will get angry and want to ban me but its the truth. theosophical centrism makes more sense than free will alone and/or determinism.
fight me.
forgot "muh shitposting flag"
I'm Sorelian, dumbass.
Some user on here posted an intro to Spinoza, I didn't download it. It was posted maybe a month or two ago. Does anyone have it, I'm very interested in getting into his philosophy.
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Thank you.
It's in French but it's a fairly straightforward introduction.
I don't know French though.
How do you plan to become a proper leftist intellectual without speaking at least French, German and Ancient Greek?
French, English, Latin and I can read Ancient Greek given time and a dictionary. I just met this wonderful girl who speaks german though, so maybe I can get her to teach me how to speak Goethe's tongue!