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Could you live believing in hard determinism?

psychedelicsoul

psychedelicsoul

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I think that if I believed in Hard Determinism I'd lose my fucking mind... I mean wow, this has to be the most depressing philosophy one could ever have. I think if I was conditioned to believe it, in a week you'd find me in a straight jacket bashing by head against the wall to prove whether or not I have free will. I don't see how one can believe it without wanting to die.
Basically... life is meaningless, humans are meaningless, and you as an individual doesn't even exist. You're just a product of predetermined biological factors. You have no free will, you're just a complex machine.

Now, I'm not saying biological determinism has 0 impact on who we are and is 100% false. Science itself proves the existence of it. But the only positivity I could get out of hard determinism is... I guess being able to absolve myself of my decisions by claiming, "I don't have free will, so I don't need to feel bad for anything"

But yea... a week of thinking like that and I'd be ready to go on a mass shooting.
 
I find my position somewhere between hard determinism and fatalism, that we have capacity for free will but it is seldom utilized and that essentially for the most part we are organic robots.. what we think of as free will is actually just very complex behavior patterns and thought patterns. When I was younger I just assumed we had quite a bit of free will in given situations, but some experiences in my life changed that belief. For me life doesn't matter.. I don't matter. If that were a purely intellectual position I don't think it would bode well for a persons mental health or life; for me personally it has been borne out of experience and contemplation, so it doesn't cause me much pain.

It is some what of a relief to know it doesn't matter. What makes me want to bang my head against a wall is that the majority of people take the wrong things too seriously and basically screw us, and future generations even more. If you understand things don't matter on a deep level then it's not like "Live every day like it's your last"=hedonism and wild party.. it's more "You were never alive and you never really die"=it doesn't matter, so let's relax and not run from pain or death, and focus on just making the world better.

Despite things being largely determined I believe an individual can exert small changes in their own life strand. Whether that means if enough people could exert changes of free will at just the right time, sequence or in harmony, enough to alter the larger picture.. I don't know. That's something I think about a lot.
 
I already live believing in hard determinism as you describe. I manage not to have the desire to commit mass murder. The illusion of free will is plenty adequate. And I would still happily vote to have you put to death were I on the jury judging your guilt on such a crime.
 
-=SS=- said:
I find my position somewhere between hard determinism and fatalism, that we have capacity for free will but it is seldom utilized and that essentially for the most part we are organic robots.. what we think of as free will is actually just very complex behavior patterns and thought patterns. When I was younger I just assumed we had quite a bit of free will in given situations, but some experiences in my life changed that belief. For me life doesn't matter.. I don't matter. If that were a purely intellectual position I don't think it would bode well for a persons mental health or life; for me personally it has been borne out of experience and contemplation, so it doesn't cause me much pain.

It is some what of a relief to know it doesn't matter. What makes me want to bang my head against a wall is that the majority of people take the wrong things too seriously and basically screw us, and future generations even more. If you understand things don't matter on a deep level then it's not like "Live every day like it's your last"=hedonism and wild party.. it's more "You were never alive and you never really die"=it doesn't matter, so let's relax and not run from pain or death, and focus on just making the world better.

Despite things being largely determined I believe an individual can exert small changes in their own life strand. Whether that means if enough people could exert changes of free will at just the right time, sequence or in harmony, enough to alter the larger picture.. I don't know. That's something I think about a lot.
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Couldn't it be said that anyone who doesn't believe in the existence of the soul is a hard detereminist? I mean, how can one believe that free will exists under naturalism? If free will is a product of something, then it cannot exist. I don't see how free will can exist if it's part of our brains. It doesn't make sense to me that nature is able to produce the existence of free will or individuality. I believe those are are spiritual concepts.

If I were an atheist I'd be a naturalist, and if I were a naturalist I'd be a nihilist, and if I were a nihilist I'd be a hard determinist. To me, free will is either a super natural entity (the soul) or it simply doesn't exist.
No matter how advance a robot is, it can never have free will. Why? Because you made it. It's programming was created...
Wait a minute...

That means that if God made us, then we don't have free will? If we're a creation, then we're also robots. Damn, I think I found my next topic.

Of course I believe our consciousness is composed of spiritual energy, and our brains are basically a radio. I pull my agnostic card, as in even though I have definite belief in the existence of god, I have no definite belief on his nature... except that there's no way God created our individual selves. I believe God merely linked us to human beings through our brain. In that sense, our consciousness has existed for eternity, like the universe and like God. God is a supreme, all powerful consciousness capable of affecting the universe, while we are not. However, we're still immortal beings composed of energy. I believe somewhere in the universe exists spiritual matter. Which could be called, "bodies" for us. Much like matter is a body with energy in it. We are energy. God is made of energy too, though he's a mode advanced consciousness. Comparing us to him is like an ants mind compared to a humans.

And that's where I disagree with theists. I believe God created everything composed of matter. However, not us and not the universe itself. You could say he put us together. He created a link between us and the brain. But that's like putting together a modal car, you "make" it but you didn't make the parts that came with it. The universe is mostly composed of dark energy. God, in my belief, is a supreme being composed of energy. Human beings are immortal and conscious like god, but are also composed of energy that exists all over the universe. We have free will because we have always existed. God encompasses the universe as a whole.

The afterlife will be as it has always been. We're live forever within ourselves. The nature of that afterlife is unknowable and probably beyond comprehension. Humans have spiritual abilities though... Much like how the energy in a single atom can destroy a city. All throughout history these abilities have been thought to be from God, but rather they're from us. From the energy that exists that is us.

But yea... I think a lot of philosophies, and religions, point to hard determinism. I mean... Even if you're a theist. God "made" us? If free will comes from any source other than ourselves, how can it be said to exist?
 
Where god comes in cold logic goes out.

I would frame it more than it's not so much that we don't have free will, but that the choices we make freely were always going to happen for the reasons they did long before we were born. You're still responsible for murder because you made those choices, you didn't know the outcome beforehand. The lack of higher free will does not absolve you when you're inside the system unable to see out of it and unable to know the future.
 
JessFR said:
Where god comes in cold logic goes out.

I would frame it more than it's not so much that we don't have free will, but that the choices we make freely were always going to happen for the reasons they did long before we were born. You're still responsible for murder because you made those choices, you didn't know the outcome beforehand. The lack of higher free will does not absolve you when you're inside the system unable to see out of it and unable to know the future.
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But if you believe in atheism, then how can it be said we "exist" as an individual. A video game AI can make choices through situations and analysis, or through chance. however, it cannot go against it's programming and it's existence is nothing but an illusion.

How can it be said that we exist, but a video game character doesn't exist?
 
It makes no more sense with god either. God is all knowing, with full knowledge of the future. In which case we're right back with hard determinism. Atheism provides more chance for free will than that does. Of course I'm an agnostic believer in hard determinism so for me I already have an answer I can live with.
 
JessFR said:
It makes no more sense with god either. God is all knowing, with full knowledge of the future. In which case we're right back with hard determinism. Atheism provides more chance for free will than that does. Of course I'm an agnostic believer in hard determinism so for me I already have an answer I can live with.
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do you believe you are capable of making a decision that would violate your brain chemistry?
 
-=SS=- said:
it's more "You were never alive and you never really die"=it doesn't matter, so let's relax and not run from pain or death, and focus on just making the world better.
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Very nicely put, and akin to what I feel. I feel like the end point of this is to not run from or seek control over anything and just see what happens. There is something liberating, truly liberating, in allowing things to go as they will (and always would have).

edit: we just agreed on something SS :D
 
willow11 said:
Very nicely put, and akin to what I feel. I feel like the end point of this is to not run from or seek control over anything and just see what happens. There is something liberating, truly liberating, in allowing things to go as they will (and always would have).

edit: we just agreed on something SS :D
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Deep down we all want the same thing, I believe. We all feel the impulse of the heart, which wants the well-being of both individual and for all others. We just disagree on how we're going to navigate our way there, using our minds. I know some here may interpret my other posts as being cold hearted.. that's not how it is really :)
 
My experience has taught me that there is no "me" in here, I'm just awareness, or the witness if you prefer. I'm not responsible for what goes on around me. That doesn't mean I don't feel a profound love, nor does it mean I'm not called to compassionately do things. Nor does it mean I don't get angry, sad, depressed, etc... it means that I know, deep down, nothing ultimately matters. It's all just the universe doing itself, as things arise and dissolve without any input from a "me". There's no past or future, there's only right now. You can't get more into it, and there's nothing you need to "try" to do. Whatever happens, is just what's happening. It's not the loss of identity, it's sinking into true identity... which is totally empty.

That's why I find the basic premise of determinism or free will to be kind of faulty. You can use free will, or let life carry you along, but either way you're not in control of anything. It's not because you're being controled, or that you're ineffectual; it's because there's no "you" doing it. It's no different than an ocean wave claiming that it made the ocean happen. And if you're the ocean, or the witness, then there's no need to take responsibility for any waves... it's just what's happening, which arises from stillness.

As far as I can tell, mind is just part of the meat. Once the mind is quiet these questions cease to matter. And all I'm doing here is translating a very embodied experience through the lens of mind for the sake of conversation. If your experience is that of being guided or controlled, then you're just a part of the oneness that thinks some outside force is responsible for what's going on. It doesn't make you anymore separate, or responsible.
 
psychedelicsoul said:
\Basically... life is meaningless, humans are meaningless, and you as an individual doesn't even exist. You're just a product of predetermined biological factors. You have no free will, you're just a complex machine.
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Speak for yourself... Not many people are going to subscribe to your negativity on here.
 
I've been a strict determinist since I was, like, 13 years old. And look at me? I like an archetype for sanity.
 
the world being determined doesn't mean you need to be sad about it

it can be a liberating thing, depending on how you view it
 
I think a lot of one's reaction to this depends on the analytic contents of "meaning". There's definitely a conflict here with society, which states that (barring insanity) you are responsible for your actions, you have the power to change your life for the better, you otherwise are free and make free choices. I think a lot of the negativity comes from the disjunction between what we're told to be or how we're told to act (which implies the notion of freedom and liberation), and how things are (in a strictly mechanical sense). So the crisis is really sourced from unrealistic societal expectations. For this purposes of the nation state, this illusion is perhaps necessary, but I won't go into that. However, the values of our state are so firmly ingrained in us that we don't realize the source of the problem without a decent amount of thought, that being one of environment, not that we're inherently flawed.

But we're so entrenched in this specific form of "meaning", which hinges on a falsehood. I would encourage you to read some Eastern and ancient Greek philosophy, as many of those writers hadn't been so indoctrinated as to base their theories (whether intentional or not) off of norms and values conducive to maintaining large nation-states.

I don't think that determinism suggests that we don't exist. It may even be heartening in revealing our inextricable interconnection with our environment. We're all tied together.

Also, it's not just biology that determinism takes into account.

I don't know about you, but my life is not meaningless:).

Just so you know, hard determinism isn't as proven as you might suppose. Look into compatiblism, indeterminism, and free-will libertarianism. There are plenty of responses to determinism...

Honestly do some more reading. You're not deep enough in the reading to be a cynic.
 
"Spiritual people don't raise themselves above others". Sometimes they do.
 
I once met this guy that told me he was a hard determinist, so I immediately kicked him square in the acorns.
He painfully exclaimed,
" OW!!! Why did you do that for" ? ?
I replied, " Sorry, I had no choice"
?
 
Erh, you guys are aware that there exists many different kinds of determinism in philosophy, yes?

Apparently not.
 
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