/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14247106]

*proves determinism*

[Anonymous No.14247117]

*determinises proof*

[Anonymous No.14247142]

bookmarking thread in case the tufts anon from 5 years ago comes back with more stories about how dennett is a legendary asshole in real life

[Anonymous No.14247155]

>>14247142
wow, surprised i didnt know he taught at tufts
>>14247117
yeah
>>14247106
one of the most profoundly shitty intellectuals out there along with peter singer and martha nussbaum

[Anonymous No.14247168]

>>14247155
Whats wrong with marta nussbaum

[Anonymous No.14247172]

Stop bifurcating nature

[Anonymous No.14247175]

>>14247168
Yet another well connected nepotistic string puller cashing million dollar paychecks for writing derivative pap

[Anonymous No.14247244]

>>14247106
*proves randomness*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

[Anonymous No.14247357]

>>14247106
What did he do to prove determinism? Link to article or a book by him?

[Anonymous No.14247359]

>>14247357
google you fucking worthless retard

>Where he do thing? You give now?

phoneposting shitbrain

[Anonymous No.14247370]

>>14247106
>tfw you cannot determine to eat less

[Anonymous No.14247377]

>tfw determined to look like santa

[Anonymous No.14247428]

>>14247168
liberal

[Anonymous No.14247599]

>>14247106
I saw him give a talk about compatibilism to a room full of physicists, and what I took away from it is--Dennett thinks punishing people for wrongdoing is the only way for society to function, and he doesn't care if that's justifiable. A wonky-as-shit metaphysical position is then constructed around the desire to punish people, in order to keep punishment from being undermined by ethicists. He's also really not interested in whether punishment is actually the best or most effective way of keeping society running.
He thinks this constitutes "practical philosophy."

[Anonymous No.14248306]

>>14247106
>retroactively refuted by the greatest mind in history: Immanuel Kant

[Anonymous No.14248327]

>>14247106
Dennett is literally a compatabalist, who has written entire books defending free will.

[Anonymous No.14248331]

free will is like an acorn that must be developed into a tree, everyone has it, yet not everyone has it developed. our true divine nature precedes any material phenomena in the body, so a connection to that divine increases your ability to exercise your free will. questions like this should only be answered by genuine philosophers and theologians, not by hack flavor of the month scientists

[Anonymous No.14248349]

>>14247599

Incorrect, compatibilists don't think metaphysics is important. They claim that the only thing that really matters is that one is free to act according to ones own reasoning and motivations, how this comes about is considered largely irrelevant. Punishment and reward effect reasoning and motivation... see where this is going?

[Anonymous No.14248378]

>>14247599
Sounds pessimistic, I'm not sure how it doesn't follow from determinism that a potential carrot and a potential stick is the best way to proceed forward to varying degrees depending on the person it is being applied to. It's clear that capitalism thrives off exactly this sort of mixture, as do all stable societies.

[Anonymous No.14248788]

*proves disproof of proof*
Hregh,

[Anonymous No.14248803]

>>14248327
>t. no clue what compatibilism means

[Anonymous No.14249017]

He seems pretty uninteresting and unremarkable. Any reason to read him?

[Anonymous No.14249020]

>>14248803
can someone explain compatabilism to me? being genuine.

[Anonymous No.14249117]

>>14247106
Bound to happen.

[Anonymous No.14249522]

>>14247106
"proves" determinism

[Anonymous No.14249640]

>>14249020
compatibilism is a catchall word for the idea that some meaningful version of free will is compatible with a fundamentally "unfree" natural world (whether fully deterministic or involving some gay quantum indeterminacy shit, but either way, the natural world is basically physicalist and mechanistic)

generally speaking a compatibilist will try to argue that despite the standard scientistic picture of the world being true, we are still meaningfully free in some way (i think dennett's term is in "ways worth wanting"), for example because we are complex evolved meta-algorithms for extremely involved contextual decision-making

in my obviously biased opinion, compatibilists are usually seen as scientistic and shallow. dennett in particular is a kind of classic 80s/90s internet atheist "secular humanist's" favourite. for anyone who actually seriously thinks about the free will problem, let alone thinks about it at a metaphysical level, dennett's solution is almost jarringly childish and shallow.

[Anonymous No.14249736]

>>14249640
thats been my problem with grasping a better understanding of comptaibilism.
they seem to sort of redefine free will as most people envision it. which is fine, but their definitions never quite made sense to me (most likely because im too stupid/not well versed enough in this type of thinking).

i think one of the points mentioned was that we have free will, but its more like a spectrum.
>compare how much free will you have when you go grocery shopping on an empty stomach vs when youre not hungry
or am i just getting this all wrong.

[Anonymous No.14249741]

>>14247106
Well, he had no choice. Not that impressive

[Anonymous No.14250056]

>>14249736
Not him but hard determinists struggle to even come up with a coherent version of what it would mean for someone to have free will (by my view).

Think about it: if everything is determined do we have free will? No they answer
Well if everything was random do we have free will? Well, no surely not still (see Galen Strawson here)
So what does a hard determinist mean by free will? Some kind of metaphysical interception in the causal chain all the way to the Big Bang? That doesn’t make any sense

The way I see it the notion of free will cannot be defined coherently and therefore we must either redefine and keep some sort of compatibilist notion or throw the concept out altogether.

(Also note that often when academics talk about compatibilism they can mean compatibility between determinism and moral responsibility NOT compatibility between free will and determinism)

[Anonymous No.14250067]

>>14247106
>Dennett

[Anonymous No.14250080]

>>14250056
free will is the inside, determinism is the outside

not that difficult

[Anonymous No.14250948]

>>14250067
Strawman. Dennett's argument is that the apparent coherence of consciousness is a pragmatic illusion, including the sense of meta-self. He doesn't argue that awareness itself is unreal.

[cunt No.14251044]

>>14247106
>what if we had free will but not free will

[Anonymous No.14251396]

>proves indetermenism and the reality of qualia and free will at the same time
Nutin personnel

[Anonymous No.14251409]

>>14248349
That's only true for compatibilist functionalism (like Dennett's approach), but not for compatibilism as a whole, you big goose.

[Anonymous No.14251413]

>>14247599
>waaaaah he wants to punish criminals
Dennett sounds based as fuck.

[Anonymous No.14251417]

>>14247106
> *proves something that cannot be proved*
Holy fuck this timeline is dumb, somebody get me off this planet.

[Anonymous No.14251443]

Why does it matter? If the universe is fully deterministic then we wouldn't be able to tell it apart from anything different.

[Anonymous No.14251775]

>>14251443
Determining what's actually going on at those scales might be factor in technological advancement, and we're curious.

The thread is bait anyways, Dennett's version of compatibilism relies upon a degree of indeterminacy somewhere in our mental processes. If we take him at face value then, he isn't a hard determinist (not that indeterminacy facilitates 'control' any more than determinism does).

>>14250056
Indeed. I don't think free will is a logically tenable notion myself, and I'm sketpical about whether Dennett really believes his own compatibilist line (considering he makes no excuses for other compelling illusions of our experience). I suppose it could be cope... The final conceit that they themselves can't surrender, but I suspect it's more like a white lie.

[Anonymous No.14252332]

>>14247599
>Dennett thinks punishing people for wrongdoing is the only way for society to function
But this is correct.
The currency of civility is backed by violence.

[Anonymous No.14252761]

>>14247359
No.

[Anonymous No.14253256]

fuck, after being inspired by this thread to do a little bit of research, i think ive fallen into the determinism camp
>there is no free will
>but the way my mind words, and the way society, legal systems, and everything we've done and built is predicated on free will, so i will continue to operate under this illusion as well

[Anonymous No.14253291]

>>14247106
Not an achievement according to determinism. This is why philosophy is dead too btw

[Anonymous No.14253385]

Does anyone with an IQ above 100 actually take determinism seriously?

[Anonymous No.14253422]

>>14253385
Deep irony

[Anonymous No.14254295]

>>14253385
No, the smartsyman's position is obviously something something quantum physics, and to make an arbitrary and indefensible distinction between reasons and causes.

[Anonymous No.14254330]

*HITS PEN* Bro what if we are determined to be free

[Anonymous No.14254338]

>>14254330
what is free?

[Anonymous No.14254442]

>>14254338
tiny parts of you

[Anonymous No.14254930]

>>14251396
How many physics classes have you taken? People that post shit like this have always taken like kinematics and thats it.

[Anonymous No.14256243]

He'd be an excellent redittor

[Anonymous No.14256418]

>>14252332
Perhaps, but even if that's true, that's not an argument for determinism or free will, much less both. It's more like, if a magician sawed a woman in half, then showed the audience that in fact there were two women (one playing the head and arms, the other playing the feet), then said "so in conclusion, kids, magic is real."
You could be forgiven for wondering what the fuck is going on.

[Anonymous No.14256494]

>>14254330
What if free to be determined