/lit/ - Literature

Determinism and free will are not incompatible. You can have both.

>>3630564
Not a philosopher, but Tolstoï wrote a few essays here and there in War and Peace.

>>3630564
the first writers to truly delve into this in europe (the hindu tradition is older and their discussion more complete, even analytical, but shot through with a lot of mythology, disquieting for inoculated secularists) were the sophists who cultivated their art in attica in the 5th C b.c.e., around whom many gathered, including plato and socrates, who eventually wrote their own replies to their theses. they were the first to introduce cosmological matters, such as, the systematic or random ordering of the cosmos, into moral matters, such as, how do i best live my life -- given that everything is pre-ordained, or completely arbitrary. perhaps, in advance of these thinkers, was the heraclitus the dark, who suggested that though everything was in flux and highly irregular, that there was behind all this a regulative power, which he simply calls 'logos.' modern psychologists have suggested that this logos was actually the human mind itself that was 'determining' or 'shackling' reality in the bonds of fate, determinism, and so forth. nietzsche picks up this thread later on and says some very interesting things, too many and too various to condense into a potted summary.

>>3630564
Non-orthodox selection incoming. Good for existential crises, not for padding out your liberal arts degree essays.

The Self Delusion - Bruce Hood
Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus
Siddartha - Herman Hesse
Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut (also consider Cat's Cradle, since that's a better book although Timequake is more relevant to your theme)

Save up some money while you read these books, if you are able to.
Take a vacation for at least three months immediately after finishing.
Volunteer abroad, somewhere with a weird climate, I recommend Oman. There MUST be an element of manual labour.

You are now 'fixed'. Get a real job and a mortgage, you will still be intermittently in great pain, but sometimes you will just have a whole day of fun and everything will be fine and you won't think too hard about things.

>>3630625
>Get a real job and a mortgage
That sounds fucking horrendous. Why can't he just stay abroad?

>>3630645
Ah no, see, being 'abroad' is part of the sickness. I mean, sure, if you want to be sick for the rest of your life...

I should have put The Glass Bead Game in that list, but too much Hesse?

>>3630649
>Ah no, see, being 'abroad' is part of the sickness.

How is that part of the sickness? Especially as your recommendation was to volunteer. If he stays teaching orphans in Borneo, or digging irrigation trenches in Uganda, he is alleviating the suffering of others. Returning to get a mortgage is wallowing in his own suffering and chastising himself, allowing only a fleeting glimpse of hedonism through the bars of drudgery.

I don't like you diagnosis, Dr. Benedictine.

try reading Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Hobbes.

>>3630676
Oh hey sure, teaching orphans and teaching irrigation trenches is noble as hell. But acceptance of drudgery is the cure, running away from it won't help!

But honestly that particular line was an attempt at humour. Of course you want to run away and be sick from trying to infest your life with meaning and doing good deeds forever.

>>3630686
I second Spinoza!

>>3630700
>digging irrigation trenches
dammit

>>3630625
thank you, monsieur. you have just given me a caricature for the book i am writing. my character takes your recommended cure to the extreme, all the while asking himself, am i cured yet. in Oman he observes a child masturbating and returns home with a new interest in paedophilia. he often returns to that experience, reflecting on whether it worked, as he spirals further and further into nihilism. eventually he gets a regular income and lives for 10 years quite normally. he is killed one morning in a car accident.

>>3630707
I would read the shit out of that. Sounds like you've put a bit of Voltaire in there too. Godspeed!

>>3630700
>But acceptance of drudgery is the cure
I will run forever. I will drink and snort and smoke and swallow. I will jump on my bike and ride that bastard with drudgery snapping at my rear tyre all the way to the grave. To embrace the mundane is to succumb to the easy, the simple, the path of least resistance. This is a fight for freedom, and that freedom can only be had through reckless rebellion and full synaptic stimulation.

The 9-5 greyscale rat race can never truly be enjoyed. The tedious life can be trivialised away, tolerated and endured, but never embraced. Deep down there will always remain a flicker of that sepia youthful optimism and hedonistic craving. To suppress it isn't a cure. It can never be fully suppressed. Suppressing is the sickness itself.

>>3630726
Touché!

oolongiv.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/dennett-giving-libs.doc

Dennett - “On Giving Libertarians What They Say They Want”

>>3630564
>As part of my existential crisis I am including a good six months of suffering on the topic of free will
I like you
You're a big man
Plans existential crises and doesn't afraid of anything

I also think you are the kid who wants help with his EE

>>3630726
You can't run, dear boy. That existential dread will always dwell at the back of you mind, kept warm by a solitude that's never cured with company. The excessive hedonism method is just a short-term narcotic lobotomy. You can't run from it as it's always with you.

>>3630564
That girl is absolutely gorgeous.

>>3630994
i don't think he's advocating excessive hedonism! how can language like 'fight for freedom' and 'jump on my bike' and so on be interpreted anything but stoically? the pleasures of motorcycles, excessive hedonism is really a stoic pleasure, the pleasure of endurance, like stripping off your clothes in the coldest winter and going out into the snow. very fun! very dangerous!

>>3630726

Ah! What a refreshing, lapidarian, and beautifully put... load of crap.

Here, have an apple.

>>3631025
What are you talking about? His method is the best solution.

>>3631016
Apparently she's called Amelie. Some Russian soft porn star. Happy fapping.

>>3631035

Oh, is it? Please forgive me. I thought what he offered was How to Live Life Combo # 3 but now I see that it is # 4 so, indeed, it is actually the best. My apologies.

>>3631045
>My apologies.
That's quite okay, sir, your arrogance got the better of you. It happens to the best of us. I'm sure had you posted your personal method of handling an 'existential crisis' someone else would have sneered at it. Have a good evening.

I take you it read the undeservingly popular (although mostly correct) Sam Harris book, on free will? Well, one of the other Atheist 'Horsemen' Dan Denett (dennet, Dennett?) has a differing opinion. Check out his books on the subject. This guy >>3630584 probably knows what I'm blabbing about.

Ignore everyone ITT and read Spinoza's Ethics

Save yourself like 5 months 30 days and 22 hours by watching Waking Life.

It answers all your questions, whatever they happen to be.

mfw people spend years overanalyzing this shit.

What do you mean by free will?

And are you aware that this

>As part of my existential crisis I am including a good six months of suffering on the topic of free will.

makes you sound like a faggot?

>determinism

Im pretty sure some of the earliest writing on this is Leucippus and then Democritus (atomos is considered an early theory of determinism). It went along with their mechanical view of the universe

Epicurus was more for in-determinism, and when you think about it, sort of invented the basis of quantum mechanics. He believed there were "atoms" but they were not completely governed by the laws of the universe, and had "randomness" in their paths. You could think of it as a predecessor to Shrodingers Cat

Arendt's Life of The Mind contains an interesting treatment of the topic. Including an interpretation of lots of the history of writers on the will.

>>3632086
>quantum mechanics

Naive monkeys thinking they can comprehend the mysticism of life by observing subatomic particles through microscopes.

????

Everyone falls for it.

>>3632086
>not completely governed by the laws of the universe
Everything within our domain of knowledge is governed by the laws of the universe.

>>3630584

Actions and consequence, bitch. If there is randomness that is not the consequence of action then we have free will otherwise we don't. Pick your poison.

>>3631996

/Thread.

Spinoza is the most consistent philosopher, not only on this topic in the history of philosophy.
If namedropping helps, he was a great inspiration for both Goethe and motherfucking Einstein, who even wrote him a love poem :3.

>>3632137
>motherfucking Einstein
>motherfucking
if not for his main sources of influence of kant, spinoza and non-euclidean geometry, he'd hardly come up with anything.

>>3632145

>Being this stupid regardless of position in timespace.

>>3632152
>ad hominem
>an argument
pick one, sweetie.
perhaps you should read more.

http://www.academia.edu/248944/The_Kantian_Grounding_of_Einsteins_Worldview_I_The_Early_Influence_of_Kants_System_of_Perspectives

>>3631999
I watched that movie years ago because some girl I was trying to nail recommended it to me. I didn't really understand it.

Believe that Jesus Christ is your savior for all your sins. If you truly believe in Jesus Christ to be your savior for all your sins then you will go to Heaven. If you believe in Jesus Christ then you are saved and you are in salvation and you have gained God's righteousness. It matters not how much you have sinned in the past, in the present and especially in the future. Believe that Jesus Christ is your savior and you will go to Heaven forever and that is the whole truth. Spread the truth