>Be me. Second week of university. My tutorial teacher has been talking about free will and determinism.(1) He asks what determinism actually means. >I'm the only one to raise their hand. "It's like when you believe you're completely embedded in the natural world. It's a completely materialist view... It's naturalistic." >"Yep, materialist, naturalist. Yep." The teacher replies, nodding. >"Um, I think the word is... epicurean. Where you believe everything is reducible to the atom." >The teacher raises his eyebrows, surely impressed by my sheer vocabulary. "It's atomist. Yes..." >"I don't know... it's weird. I don't understand how anyone can actually believe in it" >"You don't UNDERSTAND? What?" The teacher asks, shocked, turning away. "Okay, who in here believes in determinism?"
Then around three-quarters of the class raise their hand, some had given me strange looks as I'd talked. It'd only been about a week's worth of set readings (Nagel on Dennett, as well as Dennett) that convinced them.
1: Tutorials are small classes where we talk about lectures, homework, etc.
If you're being sarcastic and/or ironic, perhaps post-ironically ironic, I suggest you google New Sincerity.
Samuel Moore
Thanks
Adrian Green
Would have helped if you had actually presented an argument for why you don't believe in determinism
Gabriel White
He said we should define determinism first. We're not arguing against it yet. Next class.
Only "argument" I really have is that Dennett seems to emphasise empiricism and scientism, when he hypocritically presents determinism because it's "science". It's as unfalsifiable as god, really. The problem of consciousness, which he thinks is physical, is barely even explained in his works.
A friend showed me a quote:
Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (1991, sometimes affectionately known as Consciousness Ignored)
... among them Dennett’s 1978 attempt to fit “consciousness” into information-flow psychology”, which, as Ned Block pointed out in the same year, has “the relation to qualia that the U.S. Air Force had to so many Vietnamese villages: he destroys qualia in order to save them...
...As for the “astonishing hypothesis”, it was the daily bread of the eighteenth-century French materialists and nineteenth-century German materialists
TL;DR: There's no reason to believe we're determined because "muh atoms and brain chemicals".
Jacob Richardson
Sorry, I'm not making sense. He presents determinism without evidence, and just suggests "oh we'll work out all the details eventually".
Christian Smith
Every other phenomenon in the world has been reducible to physics, so it makes sense to hold a general materialist attitude when it comes to the few things that haven't been 100% understood yet. Especially when it comes to consciousness, that is influenced by your body in immediately obvious and major ways.
I'd say people who want to argue otherwise can only do so by dismissing empiricism, which opens yet more problems.
Thomas Cooper
This never happened
Luke Campbell
same
Joshua Barnes
>footnotes in a shitpost
First time ive seen this honestlyvmade me laff oud loud
Nolan Cooper
shit shit post
Evan Fisher
Too bad, it did happen.
Leo Richardson
Read Spinoza, pal. Those classmates you look upon so condescendingly are smarter than you're giving them credit for. There are no longer and arguments to be made against determinism.
Eli Mitchell
>>The teacher raises his eyebrows, surely impressed by my sheer vocabulary Is this real? If it is, can I have your address? I want to beat you to death with a brick.
Christopher Brown
Sticks and stones, monsieur. Sticks and stones.
Carson Hernandez
>asked for a definition >gives opinion I seriously hope you guys don't do this outside your invented stories
Alexander Foster
>There are no longer arguments to be made against [insert metaphysical system]. kill yourself
Wyatt Thomas
Definitions are opinions, at least a context of opinion.
Josiah Hernandez
But determinism is idiotic. Your classmates were just trying to agree with the teacher so they wouldn't end up scolded like you.
Noah Harris
>scientism Using the scientific method to test things isn't an "ism".
Jack Howard
>determinism is idiotic this
Dylan Hill
Most people don't understand it and just believe what they read in pop science articles, so it's a ism alright.
Austin Anderson
Yes the scientific methods yields the true truth. Whether you believe in it or not it doesn't change what's true. Trust in science is fundamentally different from other belief systems.
>Using the scientific method to test things isn't an "ism".
No, no it's not, but thinking you can get values out of scientific facts is. Which is what scientism is.
Aiden Barnes
...
Asher Torres
>Be in university
Much more succinct than >be me
It's like saying I am me. Well who else could you be?
Dylan Evans
>Well who else could you be? Me
Matthew Jones
Will break your bones, yes. Hence why he wants to beat you with a brick.
Lucas Gray
Somebody's got an ism but I'm pretty sure it's OP if ya know what I mean.
Grayson Reyes
>Philosophy is stuck applying different labels to thought
Wow no wonder it's a floundering discipline
William Powell
>That one guy who misconstrues everything and spends 20 minutes "debating" everything the professor has said at the end of each lecture while the professor tries to be cordial and you never actually finish the slides
Joshua Wood
I'm a solipsist. For all I know you might be an inhuman entity, and the only reason this thread was created was to distract me from something.
Jonathan Thompson
to break his dick?
Xavier Martin
>Every other phenomenon in the world has been reducible to physics No, you only think it has.
David Diaz
Yes it is. No it doesn't
Daniel King
Name one that hasn't then, faglord.
Zachary Richardson
Mass.
Camden Moore
All of them.
Leo Lopez
CHRIST, I REMEMBER SITTING IN THESE CLASSES WITH DORKS LIKE YOURSELF.
INPUTTING YOUR BANAL THEORIES AND ASSERTIONS INTO EVERYTHING WITH THE THE CLICHÉ, THE UNRELENTING DISGUSTING USE OF THE WORD "Like". AS THOUGH IT WAS SOME ACCEPTED FORM OF THOUGHTFUL PAUSE, AS THOUGHT IS CONTAINED WITHIN IT A RESPECTABLE BREAK FOR YOU TO GATHER YOUR THOUGHTS!
HOW CHILDISH!
HOW DISGUSTING!
I SPIT ON YOU WITH COMPLETE CONTEMPT!
ALAS, YOUR OPINION IS, OF COURSE, A REASONABLE ONE! REASONABLE IN THAT WE CANNOT SIMPLY SAY THAT THINGS ARE DETERMINISTIC FROM A HUMEAN SENSE. THAT BEING SAID, YOUR COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR NATURALISM AND INSTEAD, A CHILDISH, INFANTILE, STUPID VENERE OF LANGUAGE RENDERED ALL RESPECT I HAD FOR YOU GONE!
YES YES, GO ON NOW! EXPLAIN HOW YOU'RE SORRY, BUT NO MATTER, IT IS NOT JUST YOU WHO IS THE PROBLEM! I HAVE NO DOUBT ALL WHOM ATTENDED THAT LECTURE WERE DUMB, OBTUSE DULLARDS LIKE YOURSELF!
Dylan Martinez
Well, if it did happen, stop attending your University as Dennett is shit and you will only be wasting your time.
Nicholas King
Wrong. Wrong.
Jeremiah Young
Mathematics
Oliver Jenkins
Right.
Josiah White
I hate that guy. Mostly because he never gives an structured rebuttal but just goes like "nah, I don't believe it".
Charles Carter
I'm sorry, daddy.
Dominic Campbell
math is an extension of human consciousness which again boils down to physics
Carter Perez
>every other phenomenon Nigger, we've barely scratched the surface of fucking physics and you dare to claim that everything can be explained in the context of naturalism? You're fucking retarded and arrogant.
Logan Thomas
If you want to BTFO materialism, just read George Berkeley.
Dominic Wright
>Citing Spinoza as an example of hard determinism Did you read part 5 of the Ethics or just an online summary?