Free will vs incompatibilism
Vegetarianism vs meat eating
Race reality vs race as social construct
Let's get to it.
i want to eat that ass
>>27177961
BRRRRAAAAPP
~oh, excuse me...
If race is a social construct, why can forensic analysts easily determine whether a skeleton is that of a caucasian or a sub-saharan?
>>27177868
free will doesn't exist from a physical standpoint
vegetarianism is morally superior, but not necessarily superior from a health point of view
races are a biological reality
>>27178140
There's that white privilege again
>>27178490
Biology is racist?
>>27178367
explain more about your understanding of free will if u will senpai.
i'm interested in people's opinions on this shit
>>27178367
Hard determinism has way too many implications, if I were to buy into it hook line and sinker I could blame my every failure and shortcoming on "free will is an illusion" and "this was my fate".
I can't disprove it and it seems plausible, it's just too fucking convenient. I have to place the responsibility squarely on my own shoulders, I can't swallow the "bad roll on the genetic lottery LMFAO gg ur life" pill. It's too profound.
>>27178799
>Hard determinism has way too many implications, if I were to buy into it hook line and sinker I could blame my every failure and shortcoming on "free will is an illusion" and "this was my fate".
This is an appeal to consequences, first off. Whether knowing a truth gives you the ability to not blame yourself or not has no bearing on whether that truth is in fact a truth.
Secondly, yes. So what? What's bad about that exactly?
I don't blame myself for anything. I feel I was compelled by either an unbroken chain of cause and effect stretching before I was even born or random quantum events that have no cause to not be a perfect person.
That doesn't make me want to be a worse person. Einstein and Spinoza were a hard determinist and they were highly-motivated geniuses.
>I have to place the responsibility squarely on my own shoulders
I did that for a while and it sucked. Really fucked with my personality and how I related to myself and others.
>>27178719
Assuming a non-existence of true randomness in the sub-nuclear particles and atoms, every event will have a clear cause-effect relationship
The only reason to why we think that something is "random" is because we don't know the contributing factors towards the outcome.
A more real example would be flipping coins. When you toss it up in the air, there will be things affecting it, like wind resistance, muscle strength, technique and the starting point. However, people don't measure each one of them, or to what grade it contributes, so that's why a coin toss can be considered random.
Similarly when it comes to humans, people often say that they "made a choice", and that it's therefore free. They don't, however, see all the previous things in their lives that have led up to that point.
>>27178799
I'm >>27178865
I also wanted to add that not believing in free will doesn't necessarily imply believing in hard determinism.
I'm a hard incompatibilist, not necessarily a hard determinist.
Even if some things have no cause, that doesn't give me "free will". If some things have no cause, then my will can't be the cause of those things.
>>27178799
The genetic lottery is only a single part of the whole thing. Circumstances and other things can more than make up for it.
>>27178046
Now this is podracing! hot!
Western women aren't significantly oppressed
Some cultures are better than others
Some religions are better than others
All scientific evidence points towards different races having different mental characteristics
Some university degrees are much more difficult than others
Scientific research suggests that being trans is a mental illness
There are two genders, male and female.
>>27178629
Stop talking to me shitlord
Nature is a fucking savage, vegetarianism is both noble in the sense they're trying to extend humanity to animals and a feat in denying reality, your bleeding heart is an inspiration for the ways I will never ever choose to be. Animals live, animals
>>27178936
That's true.
Humans, however, have distanced themselves from nature. I don't think that factory farms were intended in a natural predator-prey relationship at least.
>>27178870
>Similarly when it comes to humans, people often say that they "made a choice", and that it's therefore free. They don't, however, see all the previous things in their lives that have led up to that point.
Even if they do see those things and try to talk about them, a lot of people will shit all over them and say "just take responsibility"--which is ironic, because sometimes that's exactly what they're doing by trying to understand their past and how it led them to their current situation.
Sometimes people think looking at your past and realizing yes, it has affected you, is a sign that you're a bad person and should be ridiculed. That's been my experience several times.
It's frustrating.
>>27179003
As far as I know, no animal other than man keeps billions of other animals prisoner in horrifying conditions for their entire lives to kill them for food at the end.
>>27179004
It is.
People often also only see the large incidents in your life, and fail to notice the everyday happenings that shape you, and as to say, "snowballs" further events. In the end, you don't have full control over how other people affect your life.
Free will doesn't exist
Vegetarians are faggots
Race is tricky
>>27178913
Fine, be that way.
>>27179148
>Vegetarians are faggots
Why?
>>27178799
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what determinism actually is.
Basically, there are many components that went into creating the "you" that you know. And technically, you aren't responsible for who you are or what you do.
You were influenced by a number of things before you could even fully grasp the concept of self and personal responsibility. Your morals were influenced largely by the society in which you live, as well as your personal preferences for people, places and things. You had no real control over the things you were exposed to that went into creating who you are.
Everything from what kind of foods you prefer to why you believe there is or isn't a god can has it's basis in something outside of you. Essentially, your brain is just a computer processing data and executing responses according to what that data dictates.
You may not always know why you do what you do, but there's always a reason. It's not that determinism absolves you of personal responsibility. If anything, it helps you realize the source of your faults and positive attributes so you can change your actions accordingly. Determinism doesn't mean we can't change or that we're hopeless, it just means that there are reasons why we are the way we are, be it nature or nurture. No one does anything "just because".
Decisions are made before we're made aware that they're made. The brain likes taking computational shortcuts so it doesn't waste time and energy on deep, conscious thinking. Most of the time, you're pretty much on "autopilot" doing several things without being consciously aware of you doing them.
>>27177868
>free will is dumb
>eat meat until we can synthesize it
>race reality
I feel like it would be a pussy thing to outlaw eating animals after we can synthesize it but I don't know. I'd feel outlawing killing animals would be somewhat reasonable though. Although by then we would have better scientific understanding of conciousness but not necessarily epistemological certainty to make a completely clear cut decision. If everyone complains about race then why does the government and police keep race statistics? Wouldn't they be attacking that? If it were a social construct what use would they be? Even with race reality the point seems kind of meh, with cultural influence and other shit.
The lack of free will does not absolve someone of responsibility though. We still experience the illusion of it and absorbing legal institutions because of it would be retarded. At best it's just a comforting thought when you fuck up and logically sound. In the future when we understand behavior much better the lines could start to blur though
>>27179162
I'm only memeing you, buddy.
>>27179248
>Decisions are made before we're made aware that they're made. The brain likes taking computational shortcuts so it doesn't waste time and energy on deep, conscious thinking. Most of the time, you're pretty much on "autopilot" doing several things without being consciously aware of you doing them.
Reading this caused (you could even say made) me realize that my feet were crossed. Right foot in front of left foot.
I have absolutely no recollection of having put them in this position. I didn't know they were in that position until I read your post, which MADE me realize it.
I didn't feel any "free will". The feet were crossed without me knowing, and when I read this post, suddenly I realized they were crossed, beCAUSE you made that post.
So, you made me do something. You also made me write this post. I wouldn't have written it if you hadn't made me realize this.
It's causal.
>>27179351
Yes, entirely so.
>>27177961
Can't find anything on bottom right name anon :(
Do you have a link?
>>27179004
The same people that shit all over you will proceed to say "but ur past doesn't define u :^)"
Yeah, I guess it doesn't. But it certainly doesn't erase all the shitty things and bad decisions I've made. Must I relive all the mistakes I made along the way?
>>27177868
I have no opinion on free will vs incompatibilism because I simply know nothing about it
I eat meat but the meat industry is objectively terrible, mistreating animals and causing so much pollution and using so much water
Biological differences exist between races but so what? They have basically no effect on people's daily lives.
>>27179487
>The same people that shit all over you will proceed to say "but ur past doesn't define u :^)"
They're wrong. My past (and my genetic past) is what made me what I am today. My past is the reason why I have these thoughts.
My thoughts are based on previous things that happened to me, and also things I'm instinctively inclined to think.
It's the same for them, whether they like it or not. They can't escape cause and effect except possibly through appeals to quantum acausal events, which they inherently cannot cause because acausal quantum events (if they exist) tautologically can have no cause.
Also, all the bad decisions I made seemed like good decisions at the time. I never set out to intentionally make a bad decision. I wanted all my decisions to be good. But it didn't turn out that way.
I had limited information, but pressure to make decisions now rather than 10 years later when I had more information.
>>27179487
Your past does define you, in a sense. That really is an inane statement that's completely devoid of any logical meaning.
There are good and bad things in your past, and they all went into making you who you are. With that said, I think what normies actually mean when they say vapid shit like that is that you're free to change now that you've been made aware of a fault or shortcoming. You're not necessarily bound to your past but it has gotten you to where you are at this point in your life.
The more you experience, the more you change and the more open you are to other worldviews. There's no objective right or wrong way to live your life since we all die in the end anyway.
I'd like to be a vegetarian because it's much better for the environment and means animals won't suffer. But it's so fucking difficult to get all the nutrients you need from non-meat sources. I hate eating and removing half of my food options would make staying alive even more difficult
>>27179248
I prefer a different approach to explaining determinism, or rather, the absence of free will.
Free will is defined as the ability to make choices independent of outside circumstances and causal mechanistic processes.
In order for free will to exist, there needs to be some faculty of the human being that exercises this free will. In other words, we are looking for a part of the human being which is able to receive and process information obtained through the senses, and yet is simultaneously isolated from any causal process, and is not influenced or affected by the information it receives or by anything outside its own realm.
Until advocates of the existence of free will can provide rational or empirical evidence of such a faculty, free will must be assumed not to exist.
>>27179681
Just eat lots of eggs and delicious nuts.
>>27179248
Well,TIL
It's just a hard pill to swallow. It's kind of a relief to feel like I'm not entirely responsible for the shit I do, that there are external factors at play. But my flaws and shortcomings are glaring, some of which are completely out of my control. I can strive to be the absolute best I can be but that's all, I'm so limited. I really am a simple person, feeble minded too.
and I can't cut myself any slack without being a defeatist loser. God damn I need some empowerment. It feels hopeless, it's existential self-loathing, painfully acceptance of aspects of myself I can't change.
Maybe that's my problem, I'm not taking any shortcuts. I reflect over everything, I can never take things for what they are. I always have to come up with some absurd interpretation of the event, over analysis 101
Is "just do it" literally the best piece of advice one can give? Because I've heard it all, those who want to help get frustrated because I'm stubborn as a mule. I almost never take advice.
>>27179681
>I'd like to be a vegetarian because it's much better for the environment and means animals won't suffer. But it's so fucking difficult to get all the nutrients you need from non-meat sources. I hate eating and removing half of my food options would make staying alive even more difficult
I've been vegetarian for over 20 years and vegan for the latter 15. It's really not hard to get all the nutrients you need on a vegetarian diet, especially if you live in the US, Canada, or Western Europe.
I even maintained a vegan diet when I was in Central America and it was only slightly difficult.
You can get vitamin D from the sunlight, especially if you're white. Vitamin d containing mushrooms are also an option.
You can get some calcium from spinach and broccoli. Better if you cook it, I think.
Dark chocolate is high in iron.
Oatmeal is loaded with iron, magnesium, and high quality protein.
Peas have lots of protein, B6, iron, and vitamin A, and a little calcium too.
Most fortified breakfast cereals have tons of vitamins and minerals (including calcium), and most people here in the States are already eating it anyway, vegetarian or not.
>>27179693
That seems like it would be indeterminable chaos. We'd just be doing things without any logical or rational basis. Wouldn't that essentially mean we'd be operating under the laws of quantum mechanics?
That would be fucking weird. Every action would be an independent action with no causal link or relation to reality as we perceive it.
"Morning, honey! Do you want eggs for breakfast?" *Smash your mom in the face with a hammer* "Gotta run!"
>>27179713
Well, I see determinism as a silver-lining, actually. If you know what's currently influencing you and you want to change, you can change your life/environment in measured ways to foster the change you seek.
You just have to stop doing what you're doing and try something different. If you're aware of where you falter, you can push through it to change. Just because I know what made me fat and lazy doesn't mean I have to stay fat and lazy.
But, it's not always as simple as that because the brain grows pretty comfortable in its patterns.
>>27179889
Quantum mechanics would still be considered an outside influence.
We are talking something outside the realm of existence, basically by definition something divine.
>>27180182
They'll never be able to prove something like that, but I'd love to see them rationalize their way around it.
>>27180182
I don't think that anything "divine" could possibly give us libertarian free will.
Trick Slattery addressed this actually.
http://breakingthefreewillillusion.com/souls-no-free-will/
>>27180992
I also agree that paraphysical phenomena if assumed to exist, should be assumed to follow similar patterns and laws to the ones that apply to physical objects.
I don't mean "divine" in the sense of a soul, I mean "divine" in the sense of something that has the power to break or restructure causality.
Which is even less likely to exist than that.
>>27181563
What would a causeless action even look like?
>>27177868
>Free will vs incompatibilism
>Vegetarianism vs meat eating
go away, these are both done to death.
>Race reality vs race as social construct
Racial roles and stereotypes are a self-propagating social construct.
>>27181579
I think this is the point where questions phrased in human language being to lose meaning.
I believe that there are such higher-order phenomena and concepts that exist within the universe, that human language, loaded with all the biased collective experience of humankind and limited by its almost exclusively pragmatic functionality, cannot express.
>>27180561
No, you can't really prove that.
But what if you can prove is that Physicalism is false?
If Physicalism is false, then hard determinism may or may not be false.
Not to mention that if Physicalism is false, then any assertions that something "divine" doesn't exist are completely baseless.
Which in turn would mean that there may well be a "soul".
>>27181733
>>27181733
pardon my laziness, but what is meant by physicalism and how could one conceivably go about trying to falsify it?
>>27181733
>Which in turn would mean that there may well be a "soul".
Even if we have souls, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of those souls are either causal or acausal.
Neither of those are compatible with libertarian free will.
>>27181563
>I mean "divine" in the sense of something that has the power to break or restructure causality.
If causality is broken, that means that it was broken by an acausal event. An acausal event logically can't be caused by anything, even something supernatural.
>>27181796
Physicalism boils down to the assertion that there is nothing more to anything than the physical component.
This is a key element that is required for hard determinism to be as unshakeable as it is perceived by some people.
>>27181836
>Even if we have souls, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of those souls are either causal or acausal.
Fantastic statement.
It would have been exactly the same if you had said "Even if we have souls, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of those souls are."
"causal or acausal" means "causal or non-causal", which doesn't carry any meaning whatsoever, since all things are either causal or non-causal.
>>27182043
How do we distinguish physicality from non-physicality?
Why should more than one category even exist?
>>27181855
>An acausal event logically can't be caused by anything, even something supernatural
Really now?
D1: An event is acausal if it is not caused by anything
P1: An event A occurred.
P2: A is acausal as per D1.
P3: Event A was caused by something B.
P4: All premises are true.
P5: B exists.
What is the logical conclusion can make using those premises and the definition I provided?
I'll give you a hint, it's related to B.
>>27182187
This argument is saying that event A is both causal and acausal. That's not possible.
>>27182183
>How do we distinguish physicality from non-physicality?
How indeed, can we even do it at all?
>Why should more than one category even exist?
Why shouldn't more than one category exist?
Think about ideas, sure, you can explain them using a physicalist view, but is asserting that they are nothing more than electrochemical patterns in the brain really true?
>>27182288
What do you think is the point of writing out P4?
>>27182322
I don't know. Premise 4 is wrong and I'm not sure what you're driving at.
Saying A has no cause and was caused by B is like saying A is a circle with five sides. It's nonsense.
>>27182187
>What is the logical conclusion can make using those premises and the definition I provided?
Perhaps in this context "caused" = "occurred" and Event A = Event B, in other words, a self-causing event, that occurred not through a cause but through its own occurrence?
I don't know if that makes sense. I'm taking a dialectic approach here.
>>27182436
>Premise 4 is wrong
I explicitly wrote out Premise 4, which usually is implicit, because I knew you would try going after the contradiction first and I though that if I wrote it out you might not waste a post on it.
We are not concerned with creating a sound argument, we have means to handwave that issue using something supernatural.
A valid conclusion will do.
For diets, I hear that a largely plant-based diet with some meat is best for our bodies, since that's what humans are apparently adapted to eating. So, simply choosing one to the exclusion of the other isn't ideal.
For race, race biologically exists in the sense that certain "racial" features such as skin color, shape of eyes, etc., are biologically-based. Skin color is influenced by how much melanin a person has, etc.
However, I think that race is also a social construct in the sense that we as a society often consider those same superficial "racial" features to be indicative of other, more intangible traits like "morality", or "superiority", which we then in turn use as a justification for treating people of other races in a different way, usually in some sort of bad, exploitative manner. Ironically, this exploitative treatment based on certain stereotypes seems to ensure certain self-fulfilling prophecies, thus making the stereotypes "true" in a sense.
Ex: Black people tend to have criminal records more than other groups, so police see that likelihood as a justification for focusing their enforcement efforts largely on black neighborhoods. However, because of the simple truth that police have limited resources and manpower, this enforcement means that the more cops patrolling black neighborhoods results in fewer cops patrolling white neighborhoods. Thus, the majority of the people the police catch will be black because that's where the cops chose to focus their attention. This high proportion of criminals being black thus reinforces the starting perception that most blacks are criminals, and the cycle repeats.
>>27177868
>>27177961
I prefer trimmer asses. Oddly enough I used to like big butts but now I think they are gross and overrated.
Maybe it was a cultural thing (spicfag speaking)
>>27182589
>We are not concerned with creating a sound argument, we have means to handwave that issue using something supernatural.
Why do you consider the supernatural to be compatible with the incoherent?
>>27184153
>Why do you consider the supernatural to be compatible with the incoherent?
Coherence is a quality and concept that exists within the human mind. The human mind was shaped by nature, therefore the natural and the coherent are bound together.
The supernatural disregards the natural and thus disregards the coherent.
>>27184252
So your answer to the omnipotence paradox would be something like God making the rock he can't lift and then lifting it?
>>27184299
If God is omnipotent, he can't make "a rock that God can't lift", because in a universe with an omnipotent being, phrases with the word "can't" are semantically absurd. It's a matter of language and there is no paradox.
Exactly as in the immovable object vs unstoppable force paradox.
Also I don't see how any of this ties in with the original topic of free will.
>>27178140
genetically the differences between people are so small they are completely negligible, we all have the same genes. race implies speciation and the last time that occurred neanderthals were the result and even then we could interbreed. skeletons are still physical features just like any other part of your body and people have differently shaped skulls in different places around the world but that doesn't mean they're so different that genetically we could consider them another type of human. race as a social construct is sort of like a dog breed, just a set of physical features we give a name to, yet there are still shared features from populations that have never met. and that also brings into question, what happens when 2 different races breed? what is the offspring? a mix of both or something new? when does nationality come into play? what about culture? is culture race? the concept of race contradicts itself so much it's difficult to understand why anyone would still want to believe in it.
>>27184979
>genetically the differences between people are so small they are completely negligible, we all have the same genes.
That's wrong though.
>>27184379
I get it but this doesn't sit well with me
Thoughts anons?
Anybody have other "threats" to lose for future thread ideas?
Some might be too easy...
Should they be harsher life truths?
Subjective morality vs objective
Self vs no self
I unno
I need to read more
>>27185492
Pose*
Text for the text god
>>27178367
>vegetarianism is morally superior but not necessarily superior from a health point of view
do you want to know how I know that you're retarded?
