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/lit/ - Literature

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468641 No.468641 [Reply] [Original]

I have a friend who believes in both hard determinism and morality.


Discuss why this is a contradiction.

>> No.468647

www.doyourownhomework.com

>> No.468649

Moral valuation implies choice - for an action to have moral valence, the actor must be able to choose between different alternatives. Hard determinism implies that this is impossible. Therefore, all the choices we make are given outcomes of prior events, and it is pointless to assign moral blame or praise for actions

>> No.468654

Morals are part of the chain of cause and effect, there is no contradiction.

>> No.468658

>>468654
Morals just happen to be a part of the chain that requires will.

>> No.468742

bitches readin to much daniel dennette.


"Deeerrr, consciousness is an illusion, but i have free will, derp!"

>> No.468795

Obvious homework thread is obvious.

>> No.468796
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468796

>>468641

Yawn.

And the problem? There isn't one. Read Richard Rorty on vocabularies.

>> No.468873 [DELETED] 

>>468658
there is no will without a cause.

>>468795
homework is supposed to do the very same thing as lit - to educate. what's wrong about creating homework threads on lit?

>> No.468882

>>468873
/lit/ is not your personal army

>> No.468912 [DELETED] 

>>468882
an army is a mechanism. it can dig a trench and lay my neighbour's house in ashes at my command but it cannot think.

there are things an automaton couldn't possibly solve. that's what /lit/ is for.

>> No.468921

helping in homework?

>> No.468925 [DELETED] 

>>468921
socrates did exactly that.

>> No.468947 [DELETED] 

can you have a cyber-dalailama-gandhi-pope machine, a moralisator m-300?

>> No.468955 [DELETED] 

>homewaargh!
is that how you conceal your incompetence, /lit/?

>> No.468957

Moral Nihilism. Feels good man.

>> No.468969 [DELETED] 

>>468957
>moral nihilism
omigod
it's even worse than amoral nihilism

>> No.469000

>>468873
>there is no will without a cause.

but now were stuck with a endless loop of causes and choices.

>> No.469020

it's not. i do as well.

>> No.469043 [DELETED] 

>>469000
except that there is no choice. morality is part of our nature.

>> No.469083

The only contradiction exists in how your friend or yourself interpret the words "determinism", "morality" and, most of all, "believe". These words are vague by nature and serve to no discussion. Your quest to prove somebody wrong with these words is strange because no real communication is going on. I'm sure that two rocks standing next to each other on a road love to think that they are proving wrong each other.

>> No.469100 [DELETED] 

>>469083
nonsense! free will is the very basis of modern western democracy while determinism is the basis of various elitisms like fascism, communism or barack obama.

>> No.469109

>>468649
>it is pointless to assign moral blame or praise for actions

I disagree. The point of praise and blame is to encourage and discourage certain actions. Whether or not those actions are determined is irrelevant.

>> No.469115

>>469100

Do you really think that rather abstruse metaphysical positions establish the guiding foundations for concretely historical political events?

>> No.469120 [DELETED] 

>>469109
by en- or dis- couraging various actions you deprive other people from the possibility to think for themselves.

>> No.469128

>>469115
No he doesn't because he's a troll

>> No.469130

>>469120

What a foolish thing to say.

>> No.469152

>>469115
It is interesting to me that centrist liberals see communists and fascists as existing at opposite ends of a spectrum.

"Every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution."

Contemporary fundamentalist fascism is merely symptomatic of the Left's weakness and failure, not an opposite, but analogous version of it.

>> No.469153

>>469120

So you're against any form of law? Children should just roam free without guidance? Pets shouldn't be trained?

>> No.469189

>>468641
Your friend believes in the illusion of morality, In other words he is the Comedian from "Watchmen"

You on the other hand hold the belief that you are special and that society is magic. You are Barney from the children's television show of the same name.

>> No.469203

>>469189
You mean Rorschach, right? Comedian was an asshole.

>> No.469211 [DELETED] 

>>469128
all socialists want to paint cruel criminals as victims of circumstance. that is determinism. free will means responsibility. we republicans are the last hope of liberty. without free will liberty makes no sense.

>> No.469207

>>469203
No, Rorschach was Libertarianism all the fucking way. People make fucked up choices fucking kill the fucking fucks.
The Comedian recognized that the world and everyone in it was a fucking joke, a sick fucking parody

>> No.469210

>>469152

Interesting. Sort of reminds me of what Irving Kristol said about a neoconservative being a liberal who has been mugged by "reality," i.e., a liberal who has lost his idealism.

>> No.469213
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469213

>>469211

>> No.469214

Your friend is FUCKED UP.

I'm afraid it's the laughing academy for him.

>> No.469220

>>469213
troll calling trolls?

>> No.469230
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469230

>>469220

Oh, I'm not a troll.

>> No.469232

>>469230
uhhhh yes you are

>> No.469236

>>469232

NUH-UH.

>> No.469258

>>469210
What that point of view misses is that idealism (in Lacan and Zizek this is referred to as the Symbolic), far from being distinct from "reality" is the only way human beings can mediate reality.

Consider a mundane example. A coffee cup sits next to me. It is not a real item, but a purely symbolic one. Its shape, its material, its method of production, what I use it for, how it means to me are the symbolic coordinates through which I can mediate the "real" of the mug. Devoid of these coordinates, the mug becomes "the thing". A totally terrifying, absolutely abstract piece of matter bearing no explanation for itself or meaning for its appearance; a totally uncontingent whole that serves to undermine my social-symbolic identity merely by the force of its inexplicability.

So to return to the notion of "idealism", modern liberals claim to believe in gender equality, race equality, the elimination of poverty and hunger, radical emancipation and so on, but this is a truly naive point of view. This is because, while claiming to be for these values, liberals privately concede that they "know very well but...". In other words they know very well that these woes are not merely contingent appearances of human nature, defined by suffering, but are rather symptomatic of the pathology of capitalism, BUT they cynically believe that capitalism as it exists now is inevitable, and all they can do is mitigate its harms.

They do not understand that to be an idealist is to be a realist is the truest sense of the word. It is to realize that Symbol organizes "reality", is not merely a reflection of it. To alter the Symbol is thus to alter reality.

>> No.469260 [DELETED] 

better dead than red (or faggot-blue democrat)
all hail free will.

>> No.469270

>>469258
and what is the cause of this cynicism? surely it's not all moral weakness or disappointment, there is some science-y acknowledgement that humans have nasty natures.

>> No.469275

>>469270
Human nature isn't good or bad, it is changeable.

>> No.469289

>>469258

I'm not really sure what you're (i.e., Lacan/Zizek?) adding to your example that wasn't covered by Heidegger already.

It seems to me that you could easily rephrase the example in terms of the present-at-hand/ready-to-hand/Dasein distinctions (not to mention diving into other possible categories).

What I don't understand exactly is your warrant for the claim that "the Symbol" or the symbolic takes primacy automatically.

(I'm not making the counterclaim that coffee mugs must be present-at-hand before they can be ready-to-hand (or anything like); but one of the things that's appealing about Div I Heidegger is the plain, old-fashioned pragmatism/relativism in terms of vocabulary choice.)

>> No.469295 [DELETED] 
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469295

>>469258
>BUT they cynically believe that capitalism as it exists now is inevitable, and all they can do is mitigate its harms.
those reformists will be swept away together with their capitalists masters when the cauldron of popular rage will blow up.

>> No.469301

>>469275
even granting that, the practical limitations of engineering the current social norms are rather steep. of course, any decent person should judge the situation from the standpoint of the ideal, not accepting the so called inevitable, but it's necessary to have the most accurate empirical understanding of human behavior in designing practical policy.

>> No.469318

>>469301

>the practical limitations of engineering the current social norms are rather steep

This is probably true in the sense you intend, but generally speaking "social engineering" is not quite as difficult as it's assumed. Arguing, teaching, writing - even the behavioral, moral, political examples you set - are all relatively influential.

>any decent person should judge the situation from the standpoint of the ideal

If you weren't you, this statement might make my skin crawl. But given your arguments above, I think I understand what you mean.

>not accepting the so called inevitable

Admirable.

>it's necessary to have the most accurate empirical understanding of human behavior in designing practical policy

That being said, any "empirical" understanding of human behavior will rely on a wide range of assumptions about, e.g., human nature, so-called economic "realities," axiological claims, and so forth.

>> No.469329

>>469289
I suppose I can only speak in terms of what I understand, and, to be frank, I don't understand Heidegger.

I don't claim that the symbolic exerts primacy over anything, or I don't mean to at least. What I rather mean is that the symbolic is the medium through which we experience the Other. This is in contrast to the Imaginary through which we experience the subject and the Real, which is a somewhat separate category.

When the symbolic coordinates that organize our reality disintegrate (You must know I heart huckabees, and in the film I believe they refer to this as "dismantling"), we can delve only into nihilism or make the Kierkegaardian leap to faith in constructing new symbolic coordinates.

>> No.469341

>>469318
well, the discussion was on the grand subject of "capitalism" as a system. so engineering on that scale is quite the task. but of course, micro situations and the different spheres of life are the unexplored frontiers of politics. totally agreed on the need for advocacy on the personal level.

i say this stuff from an american pragmatist point of view. it's not exactly lacan/zizek, but there is shared concern for the seeming incompatibility of "human nature" and political ideals

>> No.469342

>>469301
The current social norms are the result of hard-fought battles on the part of the disadvantaged. They aren't perfect, but they emerged as the products of radical social choices. If you are not willing to dive into crisis and do ideological battle, then you are not a true leftist.

>> No.469348

>I don't understand Heidegger.
that's because you are a retard. he didn't write for the internet age when you can google every most convoluted neologism of his in a split second to realise what a pretentious twit he was.
why do people forsake his 1933-1945 era publications? they are just as thoughtful as Sein und Zeit.

>> No.469346

>>469329

Well, shit, nigga.

You have to read your Heidegger.

Surely it's no less difficult than Lacan. If it gives you trouble (which it should, if you're actually reading it), look up Stephen Mulhall's Routledge Guide; Hubert Dreyfus's Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I; that book by Okrent (I think) about pragmatism and Heidegger; and you might look for more help in The Book of Tea.

It's worth it and, I think, necessary to understand 20th century (and later) continental.

>> No.469354

Homework threads like this are hilarious because any paper you write based on these responses will most likely be absolutely horrible. Especially if you have no ideas of your own about the subject in the first place.

>> No.469355

>>469342
oh, i totally know that. to me, empirical research on how human organisms function and left politics are not incompatible at all.

>> No.469357

>>469341

>i say this stuff from an american pragmatist point of view

That's excellent. Are you an undergraduate/graduate, or just an interested party?

>>469342

>If you are not willing to dive into crisis and do ideological battle, then you are not a true leftist.

Fuck yeah. Amen.

>> No.469358

>>469357
undergrad

>> No.469368

>>469346
It's hard for me to see Heidegger as anything more than a deluded romanticist. Heidegger denies the filth of human existence (Cornel West's "funk") for a romantic ideal that begins in too much hope and ends in too much disappointment. Not that that is an excuse for not doing my homework, I suppose. I haven't really had a chance to read him in any classes, but neither have I had a chance to read Zizek in any classes and I do that anyway so perhaps I will take your advice and start reading Heidegger.

>> No.469369

>>469348

>why do people forsake his 1933-1945 era publications? they are just as thoughtful as Sein und Zeit

Because Being and Time is popularly (ha ha) considered to be his masterpiece. This is unfortunate, but true.

Broadly speaking, however, I think some of the later Heidegger has actually been more influential than the earlier stuff, although I think there's a remarkable and often overlooked continuity there (not to imply that he didn't let some things go, adopt new positions, etc.).

>> No.469377

>>469368

He's, as you say, a deluded romanticist, in addition to being a pretentious, stodgy asshole.

That being said, reading and understanding him is really crucial. In my opinion, in Heidegger, you get to see the full flowering of Western philosophy; you see it bloom and then begin to die. In a sense, he's the fullest expression of a long, long tradition and also, simultaneously, the surpassing of that tradition.

>> No.469385

>>469377
Where are you studying?

>> No.469391

>>469385

Stony Brook.

>> No.469397

>>469342
>They aren't perfect,
they're useless. after your hard fought battles for the niggers, spics, faggots and cumdumpsters you see bead-ridden homosexual jewish niggerfeminists invoking new arguments for a murderous imperialist war of aggression on the middle east while your lower classes / niggers still live in a constant state of civil war.

the western university left has failed in a much more disgusting way than has the eastern one. it has been swallowed and digested by the capitalists, faggot.

>> No.469400

>>469391
What are your research interests?

>> No.469415

>>469400

The relationship between strains of analytic philosophy (Davidson, Quine, Sellars) and Continental thought, the historicity of science (drawing particularly from Feyerabend and one of his later disciples named Munevar), the influence of Darwin on philosophy, the relationship of pragmatism to post-structuralism, the relevance of post-religious theology (Buber, Levinas, Tillich) to a humanistic ethics.

The short answer is that primarily I'm interested in pragmatism/neopragmatism and I'm strongly in favor of inter/multidisciplinary studies.

>> No.469444

>>469400

Well, I'm out, man. Good luck with your shit. Hopefully I'll see you around, although I'm not on here too often.

>> No.469453

>>469444
same same same.