Ted Hoffman

This is still far from what spin is suggesting. I have sexual desires and may not be very clear about their sources. But it is up to me whether I masturbate, have sex with a partner or simply ignore them.
I desire to be a great author but how I get to make that desire an achievement is up to me. Dont confuse the sources of desires with the means to fulfilling them.

spin

Interesting jump. But no. Have you ever tried to predict the weather at least in a normal temperate zone six months ahead?

Probably not, but I'm sure there is a lot of tolerance. You might of course be more likely to worship Dionysus if you took up with a devout Bacchanalian priestess. But then if you split up, you'd probably start wondering what the f*ck you'd been doing.

Why are there proportionally so many christians in America than there are say in India? Why might there be proportionally more non-believers in Britain than in America?

Wilful, rational choices are part of the overdetermination.

Oh, yes. That's why predicting the weather six months ahead is somewhat difficult. There are just too many factors to ever be able to use in calculations.

How much choice do you actually think you have? In god save America it's part of the most basic indoctrination process that every child absorbs before they are conscious of much else -- but individualism is only a fairly modern notion stemming from the renaissance.

You think you control your thoughts? Well, you might know that language is the vehicle for your thoughts, but it also has a factor in shaping them. Who did you learn your language from? Did you know that a child's linguistic environment dictates the language that they learn, given any general disposition that the child has, and that language dictates much of the ways they think? You learnt most of your basic language before you had any choice whatsoever. You couldn't say, "mammy, why don't you tell me about logical positivism?"

You are a product of your whole education. What you think, what you eat, what you wear, who you marry, has at least partially been imposed on you.

I'm sure that you can appreciate that if you received one sort of linguistic training you were destined to do less well at school than others and there is nothing you can do about it by the time you're say twelve, because your linguistic habits are so central to your analysis of social, cultural, political and intellectual reality.

Why for example are most people's voting habits determinable when they are eleven (yep, eleven according to the literature I read)? Those donkeys in the middle who swing as the carrot does may also be predictable (but I don't recall comments on the issue in the literature).

This has nothing to do with philosophy, Ted.

There you are again, being so religious in your formulation. Overdetermination is so frustrating.

"That looks like the right sort of building."

The person who flings himself himself to his death has probably long before lost the chance of surviving. It will only be through the concerned intervention of compassionate people that he would have a chance. And then it's dubious.

I guess part others', part mine.

I haven't actually enunciated it before, so philosophers would probably have a field day, but then I think most philosophers would have trouble locating their private parts, if they weren't attached.

I can appreciate the "feeling". As you don't know enough about the idea, you don't yet have enough to go on logically. You can only give me your (overdetermined) kneejerk reaction.

Wouldn't you know it? It is extremely difficult for you to have a simple reaction to anything that is not merely a physically induced reaction.

We want so badly to be free agents. But we can't. It's not in us. We've never had a chance and we could never have a chance. You are the sum of your general education, which includes how frequently your father paid attention to you, how interesting your physics teacher was, how well you were toilet trained, your intimate relations with your sexual preference, the effects of how much income your family had, how much TV you watched. We are so pumped up with this free agent rubbish that when most of us fail we will content ourselves with the "right" response: we didn't try hard enough. That's not overdetermined? Certainly most of them will believe they didn't try enough, but why?

Identity and choice are very complex issues -- too complex for one to usually think about. As to choice, if they did think, they'd probably never get to the choice. We've very good at filtering much of the apparently extraneous material out of our consciousness. We don't need to notice overdetermination.


spin

spin

No, that's not a given.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Damn. You are right!
But how will you prove its not me?

Ted Hoffman

You are basically saying that there is no ego: just a collective of - "the sum of your general education, which includes how frequently your father paid attention to you, how interesting your physics teacher was, how well you were toilet trained, your intimate relations with your sexual preference, the effects of how much income your family had, how much TV you watched"

But its still me. You are merely trying to abstract it.

No Robots

Take a look at the rest of Spinoza's letter:

For, although experience abundantly shows, that men can do anything rather than check their desires, and that very often, when a prey to conflicting emotions, they see the better course and follow the worse, they yet believe themselves to be free; because in some cases their desire for a thing is slight, and can easily be overruled by the recollection of something else, which is frequently present in the mind.

So, it is always you, but you act and think in a determined way. The key is to understand what the determining factors are, and thus attain inner freedom.

Ted Hoffman

The weather system is a chaotic system so its behaving exactly as it should. No problem there.
Human beings influence each other. It doesnt mean we are purely the result of other people's influences. They play a part. But we also play a part. If you bring it down to the half-full half-empty perception of analogy, we see how much perception influences the signals we get. We are social beings. We interact but the output of an interaction is not purely determined by who we are interacting with. We have theists like Helen Mildenhall who have been in IIDB perhaps longer than any of us, yet she remains a theist.
The individual has a role. You are merely trying to snatch away the notion that we as individual are the deciders. You are reaching in and arguing that our egoes and who we turn out to be are just a product of things we otherwise have no control over. We are like bullets from fired guns...damn. Its moving back to spinoza as cited by noRobots...
I say only up to a point. That is why we talk about non-consensual sex. That is why we talk about "coercion". In fact, the basis of culpability in law is based on the idea that some actions can be blamed on specific individuals. If we were to embrace your philosophy, no individual is guilty of anything. And we wouldnt need to distinguish minors from adults.
Different currents. Politics, lifestyle, economics, opinion leaders and history all these affect the likelihood of people being more religious. They werent at the same starting point when the gun was fired for starting the historical race, so they cannot be the same.
You think its Sociology? Psychology? In any event, its a derived theory, not a basic one so it is largely Philosophical in my view.
That is the human condition. They werent attached so that they can be located. In fact, they aren't attached at all. The male genitalia are appendages, not attachments. Your expressions are heavy with teleological import.
There it is! This fatalistic view is what makes me think we are looking at the cousin of predetermination.
So, do we excercise compassion and save the dude and risk engaging in a dubious "rescue" against the uncontrollable multivariable forces that drive us or do we sit and contemplate our bellybuttons?
Only dubious if no corrective action, like Therapy is excercised. I had a doctor friend who believed that “Drugs, as long as you are dependent on them, do not restore health, although they have survival value; they are cultural substitutes for the shortcomings of nature.” He must have thought drugs are "dubious".
I think you are making too much of it. We have people who are brought up in the gutter and end up as kings and we have people brought up in the palaces and end up in the gutter.
I am a strong believer in the idea that where you come from does not dictate what you become. I am the only atheist where I come from and in my country, I only know of three other atheists. We are talking a population of 33million odd buggers. Human beings are complex. Its not just identity. Even our DNA is complex. Even the collapse of the quantum wavefunction is complex. it doesnt mean we cannot understand and influence them it doesnt mean we have no role and are just being swept by currents.
You will need evidence for the idea that "We've never had a chance and we could never have a chance". So far, as you know, there is none.
You may subscribe to the school of thought that says that a man's grasp is beyond his reach. But we have a chance. We have always had a chance. We may be distracted, tired, slow, lazy or not hungry enough. But the chance is always there. Remember that there are many ways to skin a cat. So even how you define "chance" will matter and be ultimately subjective.
This is philosophy either way. Thanks for playing.

Your point is well taken though I dont agree.

Clivedurdle

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...nt.html?page=2

Now, something to combine wargaming, ecw, chocolate and high mass!

Ted Hoffman

In fact, as per your theory, we do not have minds since we act exactly as we are programmed. Or rather, you redefine the mind and its workings as a product of external forces and leave no room for something immanent, something primally focused on attaining the interests of the individual. Something selfish.
Assume that an orphan is brought up in a school where there is a Buddhist teacher, an atheist teacher, a Christian teacher and a Muslim teacher. These teachers all get an equal chance at explaining their beliefs. What is it that, all other factors remaining constant, will make this kid end up as an atheist or a Muslim?
That thing, whether you reduce it to the hypothalamus of the brain, or hormones that affect mental disposition. That is who the kid is.

No Robots

The self, the ego, is a construct of our perception. It is no more real than any other perceptual construct. The only thing that is really real is the Real itself, the Absolute, Beingness itself, the One, of which our "selves" are but localized concretizations.