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Originally Posted by Jibninjas
What you are describing is the circumstances dictating our choice. We live our lives based on the idea that we dictate our choice.
We do dictate our choices. This doesn't imply that our circumstances don't dictate our choices.
Many things dictate our choices. You're speaking as though only one thing can do so, but I think you're demonstrably wrong. Furthermore, you're being semantic. For example, I can say "Bob dictates my choices." I can then say "I dictate my choices." I can further say "the king dictates my choices."
Let's assume that only one person can dictate my choices (silly I think, but let's roll with it). Am I contradicting myself here?
Not if I happen to be a king named Bob, I'm not. What you're doing is similar to saying "Let's get our story straight: did we feed ducks in the park today, or did we feed mallards in the park today? Well? Which is it?"
The fact that you label "us" and "our circumstances" as two completely different things, but this is a bit of a trick. Clearly, we are determined to some degree by our circumstances, so if we determine our actions then (to some degree) our circumstances also determine our actions.
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Regret does not follow from determinism, it follows from libertarianism. To regret is to believe that you could have done differently.
To regret is to believe that you
should have done differently.
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Unless you are talking about regretting just the outcome of your "choice". But you cannot regret the choice in a deterministic frame work as it makes no sense. You don't choose between A or B, the circumstance chooses A or B and you comply.
The circumstances shape you, and you make your choices. But you are the only one choosing. The circumstances can't choose (see my definition above - the circumstances have no mind, they choose nothing - only you choose your actions, and only you bear the responsibility).
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You say "I have determined a tragic outcome", but that is a nonsensical statement in a deterministic framework, as you are not the ultimate causal agent.
I don't have to be. Nobody ever brings "ultimate" into it. I don't think in my daily life I've ever even heard anyone talk about whether their choices are "ultimate" (in any sense) or not. And nobody defines choice or control based on how "ultimate" it is. I have control over my actions. I do not have "ultimate control," in order for my control to really be ultimate I'd have to be God. You don't have ultimate control either.
In fact, according to you, you have no control - whatever makes your choice in a libertarian framework cannot have a prior existence, so your future choices can't be determined by you. The you that exists now has nothing to do with them. If the you that exists now determined your choices, that would still be determinism (albeit another form, and a form in which your soul would have to be considered as a part of the universe). The action is still determined, it's just determined by the nature of your soul instead of the arrangement of particles. Only if everything (including you) can be exactly the same and you can
still make a different choice does libertarianism hold. But since you haven't changed, but the choice has, you did not determine the choice at all.
But back to logic, in order to have control I only have to be the causal agent. I don't have to be the "ultimate causal agent." Find me any definition of "control" in any dictionary that says I do.
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Everything leading up until that point (even before 'you' existed) dictated the choice you made. So how could you regret (wish you had chosen differently) if you could not have chosen differently?
I could have chosen differently. If I had been a different person, or if I had known then what I know now, or if I had thought it through a bit more. But I wasn't a different person, and I didn't know then what I know now, and I didn't think it through. So I didn't make the choice I should have made, instead I made a choice I regret.
When people experience regret, they usually say things like "if only I had cared more" or "if only it hadn't happened so soon" or "if only I had known..." In other words, when people feel regret they
wish that the prior conditions had been different. Why would they do that if they don't believe that those prior conditions determine events?
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Deliberation is a process where an agent decides which outcome they are going to actualize. It implies a causal relationship. I don't deliberate over whether or not I am going to allow the sun to rise because I have no causal relationship with the sun rising.
Yeah. Or put another way, you don't determine whether the sun will rise.
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And I have never stated that past factors cannot have an effect on free will choice, only that they do not dictate the outcome.
The point is that the value we associate with the choice is proportional to the effect that past factors have on that choice. The rest we describe as fluke or whimsy. And we draw deterministic conclusions. For instance, if someone kills another person on a whim, we say that the person has no regard for human life. But we can't know that - unless the
past factor of having no regard for human life is a necessary condition for killing on a whim. Maybe you want to say that only sufficient conditions "dictate" actions whereas necessary conditions only "affect" actions. But you haven't defined your terms and you aren't describing them logically, so I don't know.
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The problem is that you cannot choose to do A. A is chosen for you by prior events. So you are in no way "controlling your outcome".
A is not chosen for me by prior events. Prior events do not have a mind, they cannot choose. Only I choose to do A, my mind is the only mind that makes A happen. Whether my mind pops out of an instantaneous nowhere, as in your beliefs, or whether my mind has slowly developed over time based on my genes and my environment and cognitive feedback, as a determinist believes, is irrelevant to whether I chose the action. If my mind makes A happen, then I choose the action. The mechanism of my mind is a separate question. And nothing in the common-sense interpretation of choice suggests any particular mechanism (nor is anything in that interpretation inconsistent with determinism).
I doubt you can find a definition of choice for which this doesn't hold true. Your statement "A is chosen for you by prior events" is false according to every major definition, including Wiki and answers.com. Prior events don't perform selection, and certainly not mental selection.
You seem to be stuck on this idea that if my actions are a function of prior events, then they cannot be choices (and can't be a function of me). If that's true, then you should be able to demonstrate it with logic instead of emotional appeals. Find me a definition of choice and demonstrate that if my actions are a function of prior events, then they cannot be choices.
I doubt you can do this, because I don't think any accepted definition of choice is mutually exclusive with my actions being a function of prior events. I've given this challenge before, and only one person has ever taken me up on it (he cheated!).