ALB
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Thanks, TS, but can you give which issue of the Western Socialist that article occurred.
Not that, from the extracts you quote, it is taking a “necessitarian” position. It is denying that humans have a “free and absolute choice” as to what they do, on the grounds that “from conception to the crematorium the human animal continues to adjust itself to the compulsions acting on it from within and without” (and not that everything was already determined at the Big Bang).
Ok, TS, as you say Sabine Hossenfelder seems to be a “necessitarian” which I see Wikipedia defines as harder than a “hard determinist”:
“Necessitarianism is a metaphysical principle that denies all mere possibility; there is exactly one way for the world to be.… Necessitarianism is stronger than hard determinism, because even the hard determinist would grant that the causal chain constituting the world might have been different as a whole, even though each member of that series could not have been different, given its antecedent causes.”
(Not sure what this distinction is unless it’s that some are saying that the Big Bang could have been different.)
The question is : are you one?
Nobody is saying that humans are outside the universe or are not subject to its laws but that doesn’t commit you to the view that “the whole story of the Universe in every single detail was determined already at the Big Bang. We are just watching it play out.”
That sounds like fatalism to me. In any event, we are not just watching it play out. We are participating in it (even if, on this metaphysical theory, as puppets).
You have described “What will be will be” and “I am what I am” as deep thought but in fact they are just trite truisms. Actually the whole thing is a trite truism which is not going to have any effect of what happens or be of any use in even telling what is going to happen. Even Hossenfelder admits this.
That’s why metaphysics went out with the 18th century (except amongst theologians) was replaced by empirically-based science, in this case neurology.
I know, TS, you want to avoid being a fatalist and I was only trying to help you out of the hole you had dug yourself into by insisting that “what did not happen could not have happened simply because it didn’t happen” and the implications of this for what is going to happen in the future.
I have listened a number of times to what Sabine Hoffenfelder says at the beginning of the talk you posted here where she is presenting the case against the doctrine Free Will (which I am not defending). At one point near the beginning she says;
“This means in a nutshell that the whole story of the Universe in every single detail was determined already at the Big Bang. We are just watching it play out.”
I take this to mean that the future is already determined and that we can do nothing about it (in fact that what all of us are going to do is part of this predetermined future). In less philosophical language, what will be be, must be.
What do you think she means?
Covvie, the problem is not the Tories, it’s capitalism.
Do you really think a Labour government is going to make any difference? They are just the alternative management team for British capitalism and will run it in the future in the way they did in the past — in the only way it can be, as a profit system in the interest of the profit-takers not the wage-earners.
A blast of satire from the past:
Interesting. With her Austro-Bavarian accent and interest in astrophysics it could even have been Lizzie herself. But it couldn’t have been as it wasn’t.
What I am interested in is not defending a will free from natural causes but in avoiding fatalism. I think that at the end she provides the answer when she says that what people think and do depends on the information they receive. It is our object to provide people with information as why capitalism cannot work in their interest and why only socialism can — even if, of course, socialist ideas have arisen out of the material conditions of capitalism and are, objectively, factual.
Otherwise, we might as well just sit back and see whether or not Socialism will or will not come.
I am just trying to find out why you seem to be saying now, that “motives” are not determined by a previous “chain of causation”.
Of course, if you think they are, then, on your own argument, a motive to counter her post could not have intervened because it was impossible for it to. It didn’t happen, so it couldn’t have happened.
Your are right. That thread has become toxic. We managed to stop it for about 24 hours the other day and discuss something else (anything) but then someone posted on it, not something new and relevant, but a direct question to our resident opponent there and it kicked off again.
Your argument that if something didn’t happen it couldn’t have happened is an amusing paradox (the corollary of “what will be, will be” — “what was, was what had to be”) but a bit pedantic if insisted on.
What is wrong with that saying socialism could have been established 150 years ago? As you pointed out, in the first post introducing your paradox, an if clause is implied, in this case “if a majority of the working class had wanted it.”
Presumably, you accept that it is not illogical to say that “socialism could have been established 150 years ago if a majority of the working class had wanted it”.
Also, that it is acceptable to say that the material conditions for socialism existed 150 years ago since this is a question of fact not logic.
Then there is a question of at what time the statement about when socialism could be established was made. If someone, say Engels, in 1880 said that socialism could be established in the coming years, would that have been a logical fallacy (in 1880)? In other words, was the future establishment of socialism in the coming years an open question in 1880? Was its non-establishment in, say, 1890 predetermined by events up to 1880?
Finally (of course) is this still the case: if someone says today, in 2022, that socialism could be established in the coming years, are they wrong? If not, why not?
Will socialism only be possible when it is established?
If states were to be banned from hosting or playing because of their records on human rights, war etc there might only be Costa Rica, Faroes and a few south sea islands left to compete.
The whole boycott idea is illogical because where do you draw the line will always be an issue. Either boycott them all or boycott none of them.
FIFA reportedly redeems itself a bit after originally giving in to pressure from NATO countries to mix politics with sport and ban Russia from the World Cuo:
https://www.teletrader.com/amp/news/details/59152836
This would be the first rebuff this war leader has had to drum up support for his side in the war.
