Sunday, August 21, 2022

The Reactions Of Determinists

There are forms of determinism that are believed by some inside the church and outside of it.  On one hand, Calvinists irrationally pretend like the Bible denies human free will.  On the other hand, naturalistic determinists assume that the external world they perceive not only exists and behaves as they merely perceive it to, but also that it renders all perceptions of free will illusory (the only way to prove free will exists [1] has nothing to do with perceptions, though).  In both cases, one thing about their reactions suggests they do not fully believe what they profess--they still react to other people as if they think others can make choices uncompelled (but not necessarily uninfluenced) by external forces.  If their philosophical conclusions were true, then even their inconsistent beliefs and responses would be beyond their control, but not only is free will demonstrable (as I have addressed separately, such as in the linked article), but such people are still hypocrites.

Now, it is folly to believe that other minds even exist because only perception-based evidence supports this; there is no way to prove this logically, although one can prove that it is logically possible for other minds to either exist or not exist and prove that it does seem as if other people and creatures are separately conscious.  No rational person believes that other minds are actually there just because it seems like they are.  Since free will requires a will and a will cannot exist apart from a consciousness, it follows that it must also be irrational to believe that other people have free will, just that it appears that they have free will, just as it appears that they truly are their own conscious beings rather than hallucinations or inanimate entities.  Even proof of one's own free will would not prove that other people exist or have their own ability to make conscious, autonomous, free choices.

The unknowability of the existence or contents of other minds does not mean one's own free will is unprovable or nonexistent, and it in fact can be proven [1], even though it is not self-evident like the existence of one's own general consciousness is.  It means that it is impossible to know if other people are conscious or have their own free will regardless of what can be known about one's own nature.  That determinists of any kind, theological or naturalistic, act as if they either believe that people do have the ability to freely think, speak, and act in at least some sense means that they seem to not actually embrace their own ideologies and are extrapolating from their own strong perceptions of free will to others, despite perceptions being ultimately irrelevant to anything but epistemological consideration.  It is hypocrisy or insincerity of a very obvious kind once a person has recognized it.

They still tend to get upset when others do something they assume or feel is morally wrong, just as they still tend to act as if the philosophical or practical mistakes of others were avoidable--an impossible thing if all mistakes are inescapable due to deterministic outcomes.  Again, they might believe that even this asinine tendency to not live out what they claim is true is itself predetermined by forces that override all true volition, but it nonetheless shows that they are not consistent.  They themselves, as people, can be scoffingly dismissed and the ideas in question analyzed separately from their blunders.  Calvinists and naturalists who would act in such a manner seemingly betray their true worldview.  It is not that this hypocrisy refutes determinism itself, for only logical proof that determinism is impossible by default or contradictory to some other provable truth that accomplishes that.  It is that hypocrisy and other stupidity is not any less irrational because a Calvinist or naturalistic determinist pretend otherwise.


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