u/Par-Adox-9

in the move to affirm absolute necessity, we end up in a conceptual universe where the structure of necessity itself, is the ultimate self fulfilled and self expressed agent.

an agent utterly alienated from its-own selfhood, yet an agent nevertheless.

theres a temptation to remove agency and the idea of the self in some forms of determinism, but there i think agency is simply transposed to some external force, or set of forces which infinitely have the power of causality passed through them, but without them ever being able to hold this power.

in this sense, causality itself begins to take on a spiritual dimension, whereby it passes through substantial material reality, shaping it, but never remaining in the same place to be it.

starting from before we knew how to speak, all we knew were appearances, emotions, and our preference, or dispreference towards them.

through these initial set of presupposed values— the pure values of feeling, we were thought through being exposed to different ideas, sounds, actions and experiences, and the way we grounded these were simply on the basis of what we internally felt is preferable.

then before we notice we have thoughts, we speak, we have fantasies and feelings which are more predictable to us, more familiar.

and on this, we constructed the subsequent ideas that lead to the ideas we have today.

but one thing mustn't be forgotten— that the ideas we were exposed to, are by no means neutral.
they are the tradition of our society, and any and every tradition can feel neutral to us as children depending on our internal preferences.

our initial experiences were grounded without justification— only later did we add that justification of biology and so on.

so we use our preference towards reality to define reality, and then we use that, to define where our preference comes from, effectively creating a full circle, through which depending on who we are, we either affirm this initial grounding as the starting point for what we know and can know, or we undermine it, and posit something else as a starting point, or perhaps we make a more transcendental claim about God which is out there, or one which is all things, or a big bang which happened in an incomprehensibly far off past, and so on.

in all of these interpretations, we are trying to reach beyond our own particular experience in order to claim, or to discover something more universal then what is merely within our direct experience— but the irony is, that this universality, is only ever known through our particular direct experience as such, and as such any universality we can know of, is necessarily nested within our-own particularity.

and any thought, is first of all itself, and only secondarily is it the thing which it tries to describe, which, itself, is imminently in and of itself and independent of our description of it.

and so from this grounding, we come to the questions:

1. " whare does free will come from"
2. " whare does determinism come from"

and really, the best anyone can say is " we don't know, it just is"— we can trace some sequence of events, and their properties, but what ultimately animates reality, is at least so far, not something that can be pinpointed ( if its even something that is pinpointable to begin with)

reality could have fixed laws, or it could be radically open and indeterminate, with temporerally and occasional parts which are more determined, or a combination, etc.
what we think it is, forms what we feel it could plausibly be like.

that something happened before another doesn't absolutely prove that this thing caused what come after— things can simply follow one another without being caused by each other.
but it also doesn't mean that they simply follow each other without being caused.
in the same way, that we participated could mean we caused it, but it also could mean that we simply occurred without causing.

science tells us what happens and what could happen, it does not tell us what something is, because thats not what science is trying to do to begin with. — and thats not bad, in-fact thats sciences strength.
materialism, idealism, theism and so on— metaphysics, cosmology, i.e. philosophy, is the field which tries to discover what things are.

its concepts and thoughts which are responsible for defining what reality is made of, and thus what reality feels like to us—

this is the irony of determinism— that it has to first start from indeterminant, sheer self preference without a concept of selfhood, but with an inner feeling of self-ness, in order to then recognize otherness, and then to instill in that otherness more power to shape selfhood, then selfhood does itself.

whats revealed in this, is that perception is mediated through thought.

and thats the irony of free will— that it needs to be mediated in order for it to be expressed.

the feeling of selfhood itself is immediately us, but it also is others then us, as it gets mediated through the passing of events.

does this mean we are mere appearances floating through the void?

i don't think thats the accurate reading of this situation, altho it can be perceived like that.

and, we are of course sheer feeling and appearances at some level, which means that what the stuff of reality is, depends on how we mediate it.

Some call it matter, others spirit, or illusion, or organic— each of these change the flavor of reality, and altho some are inclined to reject some of these as unscientific, we have to remember that,
" matter" is a metaphysical category first and foremost, and even " physical" itself, is a metaphysical category — it is not something we derive, its something we presuppose and define— its a thing we determine, and not a thing which is reality itself gives us— its something we produce, not something we discover.

to this extent, even " reality" is an esthetic term— it tells us how to feel existence itself, but not what existence directly is.

i hope i've been able to properly convey the feeling of radical openness to define what reality is.

it helps if you try to feel what a reality made of spirit feels like, or what one made of chemicals feels like, or of atoms, or of ideas, and so on— try to feel how each of these give a distinct flavor to our perception.

as to the question of what we are.

i think we are the thing which mediates reality.
the thing in between internality and externality— an indeterminate, observer, which is at once mediating reality through it, and is mediated through reality.

we are in that sense, the determination itself, the will itself, the spirit of mediation.

and the way we mediate reality is through interpreting it, through our knowledge, our imagination, and so on.

our freedom, lies in this lack of certainty about what reality is, and so we can overdetermine what it is, purely by assuming that it is, and committing to a set of axioms.

from there, we can still nevertheless properly discover how reality works, but the conclusions we get about what "how it works" means, will lead us to different ways of relating to the world, and hopefully in ways that enrich our experience of it.

i do have to say tho— any existential dread that this might induce, can be mediated through simply reasserting your previous metaphysical grounding, or asserting another one, and really try to feel it.

i mentioned a are a few popular ones earlier, like physicalism, idealism, theism, but some go for simulation for example, or game, or frankly, even goth, and rock, and so on— each of these paint how we feel the fabric of reality, and so they can be used, altho some aren't as developed as others, but you can do it personally.

have a lovely day

Is it just me?
(Note, im speaking to a particular kind of determinist and liberterian, not to the whole comunities, since views vary)

I feel often times the combacks to some liberterian claim is something in the realm of explaining that things happen sequentially.

That things happen sequentially doesnt go against free will or liberterianism, why would it?

To will something into existance is litterally to cause it into existance, or in determinist terms, to determine it.

Often the liberterian claim is simply that,if oitside elements have the power to determine us then we also have the power to determine them and ourselves because we are apart of the causal chain.

And also, its not a contridiction to say that two things have free will, i.e. the general ability to cause freely, but only one of them gets to act our more will whille the other gets to do it less.

Every interaction involves, well, every party which is within the interaction.
Phisics posits a cooperaive nature whareby animate objects cant simply impose themselves on reality in some absolute sense— but it seems like often, many determinists use the exact same structure liberterians do, only they put causal power in the hands of that which is outside of the self, while liberterians put it inside as well, altho of course, their blindspot is likewise that we have more power then do the outside effects.

This is why compatibilism exists— to point out that, guys, you are just taking the same phenomenon from two different directions.

Its like having two people next to eachother, one is doing a hand stand, and, and both saying the direction beneeth me is down, while it never occurred to them that direction is relative to your position.

Same with this matter.

Look at any interaction in nature and youll find equal and oposite reactions.

The difficulty is that this feels different then a direction, but it really isnt if its posited as " either we have free will and will ourselves or nature determins us"
Even tho that translates to " either i determine myself or nature determins me"
Well how about both?

Does the axe not dull when it chops a tree?

Are interactions merely " actions" without simultaneous reactions at the moment of the relation?

Does the brain not take sensory input from our inner experience?
Is it only the iner experience that is produced by the brain?

Does one of thease disapear when the other acts ?
No.

Both exist simultaneously, and they send eachothers signals, its nothing all that controversial really.

Anyway, what do you think?

how is a thing determined if it never stops determining?
how is a state determined if it is immediately undermined by further determining, and stops existing just as soon as it started existing?

that certain parts of reality appear solid and fixed, and that concepts tend to be written and so they appear as fixed— this is what creates the illusion of things being "determined" when in actuality things are continually "determining".

the only thing that we know of that exists is the continual present moment— we don't have access to anything which has been absolutely determined and is no longer determining.

when a thing is said to be determined, whats being done is, a smudged simularity in geometrical form, is being taken as a fixed eternal form that exists eternally out there somewhare in a nonexistant past state.
its appealing to think of the past as a thing that exists, but try to intuit the fact that its not a thing thats there in any way shape or form as far as we can observe.

memories are only echo reflections, imitations of a currently hollow absence, and these imitations which are presently exist-ant, are the only things holding up our anchoring to the non-state of the past— same can be said about why some objects are so consistently looping similar forms of states— its that their present composition of what they are, informs them of how they are continuing to deform.
( i'm phrasing this a bit differently from the usual phrasing about events, to highlight the different perspective)

our conceptualization of time as a linear sequence, rather then a continuously deforming surface, which has states come in and out and in and out, is what causes this confusion— and that conceptualization of sequence is only there for practical understanding because its easier to intuition then a concept of time which doesn't actually draw some proverbial line from one state to another, but which is actually mere continuous topological deformation, no past, no future, only the perpetually deforming present.

this linear conceptualization is what confuses our ability to perceive time.

time is more-so a wobbling topological shape, then a sequence of discrete elements going one after another like dominos.

*this doesn't mean its the only thing that time could be, because im not one to take on a singular position, since i enjoy the exploration much more then the feeling of cirtainty in some absolute conception of reality.
ive been a liberterian, a determinist, a nihilist, a compatabilist, even an incompatabilist determinist, same for theist, atheist and agnostic, and untill lately ive found that even the compatabilist perspective ive had untill recently doesn't quite capture what time is like, so now, kind of stranded outside of each of thease even tho i think each get some part right and are perfectly valid in and of themselves through their-own frameworks— nevertheless, i say lets try to push beyond our common conceptions and keep the spirit of discovery alive.

*this is only meant as an account of how time actually works according to physics, for the purpose of attempting to convey how time works to the point of it becoming intuition— and this will serve as a starting point for further exploration of reality, which itself tends to be limited by a mis-intuited sense of how time appears to operate, and to that end, ill also describe some connected phenomenon.

0. to our knowledge, reality is infinitely devisable in terms of any measurement, and that speaks to either:
   a) our own inability to properly measure
   b) realities ability to have exact subdivisions

– in this case, point "a" actually serves as proof for "b", because it proves that even the most self-aware, self recursively reflective aspects of the universe that we know of, isnt able to create a absolute anchor points in a fundamentally fluid universe.

this fluidity, doesnt seem to exend just to one aspect of it, but to every aspect of every aspect we can detect— with the only difference being how compactified something is, and this density creates the apperance of stillness in objects.

the universe is fundamentally animate at every level as far as modern science, philosophy, religion, art and even math can tell.

why should we smudge the numbers to make what isn't fixed, to appear fixed?
even if it is actually fixed, our inability to observe it as such in any sense that isn't temporary, speaks of the fact that fixity is a relation rather then a definitive quality, just like liquidity.

consider that what is fast to us, is slow to a fly— and what is slow to us, appears unmoving to a fly, and likewise what is too fast, also appears to us to be either invisible or unmoving— the cycling of a fan for example, which imprints its repetitive motion as a visually solid looking shape.
same can be said about sounds and so on.

1. in which sense can it be said that "a thing which never stops moving, but only ever appears to stop" is determined?
   how is a thing which isn't fixed possessing the quality of being defined in a fixed anchored state of being?

2. if all that ever exists is the present moment as such, and if all prior states of matter/energy immediately disappear without a trace, right after their initial emergence— if this is actually the case, if our perceptions are indeed speaking to some underlying fact of nature, which, they at the very least speak to their own nature— then how would the past ever be able to influence the present moment?
   — if all there is, is one continuous present moment, then the past moment simply lacks existance immediately after it emerges— and saying " after" is really a misnomer here, because there isnt some cutoff point between one moment and another, its directly existing and lacking existence and transferring to another state, simultaneously– all three as perpetually simultaneously occurring.
   — the only way the past would be then able to influence the present would be through the echos of representations of it within memory.
   the imitation of one state within another to the degree to which that state had left some reflection of itaelf within the state, which the substance it is, continually transforms into.

3. the reason i perpetually emphasize these terms " continuous and perpetual" is so we are anchored in the intuitive feeling of seemless continuity, rather then in the feeling of disjuinted moments going one after the next as cardbord cutous.

the way we conceptualise ideas, on paper, through language, gives the phenomenon we describe a sense of fixedness, rather then what it ahould evoke, which is dynamic perpetually fluid mobility.

and it is in this very mis-intuiting of how the phenomenon appears, versus how our representation of the phenomenon appears, that, we gain this sense of " ahh its determined"

it has no fixedness, perhapse not on any level whatsoever— you cant determine a thing which has no definitive anchor of fixedness, it simply isnt coherent— its like trying to say that water can hold itsown shape even if we remove the cup itspresently in.
and again, this is just a metaphor– the cup only appears determined and fixed compared to the waters fluid dyinamics— but both cup and liquid, are in perpetual motion.

we take this apperance of fixedness for granted to then make conclusive leaps about the nature of reality, without really grappling with the object of our investigation — even this word " object" envokes a kind of fixedness which isnt the totalising quality of the object itself, but only appears to be on some level.

4. however, fluidity is no less of an appearance then is fixity.
   so from thease two estetic categories we then derrive the ideas of free will, partaining to fluids having more degrees of freedom, and solidity, having more degrees of constraint.

compatabilist then, is our ability to use the solid, and concretely ordered aspects of our being, in order to create containers within which we can express the fluid, dynamic parts, and the fluid parts themselves, in turn, find configurations which are able to shape the solid parts.

if we look at these as structures, rather then as concepts which pertain to prediction, we are able to fully escape the dichotomy of free will and of determinism— in the sense that all we ever have is the ccontinual present moment, and that besides it, we cant speak to a nonexistent past or future, as if it has a shape or substance to speak of which isnt just our present representation of that shape.

its through this recognition that only the present freely on itsown, in and of itself, without any outside time, determines its continual self being, that we can escape this apparent chain that binds us to the past— this metaphorical representation, which only makes sense in so far as we continue to believe it, even tho our continual belief in the present is the only thing which gives it power to act on our perception, behavior or direction self perpetual movement.

again, is all that ever exists is the present, then the future is not this place we get to— i know people will say " but we didnt think it was a place to begin with, just like we didnt think the past was a place either" , but to that i say, even tho you didnt think it in those terms, you spoke of it as if it were that, as if it was some space which has actual existance which infuences us from behind the present. or are meant to be ahead of the preasent— if its mot a place and if it lacks existence, and if the present moment is the only thing that can determine what goes on in the present moment, then all the agency of lack there of is perpetually in the moment we are experiencing.

and i know its very difficult to really intuit this physics of time when the way we conceptualise time as space— we conceptualize it as a sequence rather then as a continuous topological morphing.

to really intuit what i mean, try to not imagine time as one event after another, but as a single object, whose shape continually deforms.

rather then " 1 > 2 > 3"
imagine, the continual morphing of "1" to "3" organically.

its hard to convey this in text, but essentially the difference is that when you look at the sequence as sepperate elements one after eachother, youre superimposing a chain, which doesnt exist.

only the current form is the form that exists, and the ones that were, no longer are, and in that sense, no longer "were" either, by the fact that they dont have any shape or substance— they just dont exist.

5. but then how do we evaluate what happened if we conceptualize time as it actually is?
   here is the distinction im trying to make.

the appearance of sequence is only a concept that present matter uses to shape itself, rather then, the sequence itself being a real existant substance in a space outside of the present which is shaping it.

this is a key distinction.

the idea is that the the past only shapes the present when it is on the form of a representation of the past, rather then the past having a distinct location from which it effects the present.

6. Here we can see that, these conceptions of time as a sequence, arrises from practicality, rather then from some abstract notion of a "higher truth"

the conceptualization as a sequence, is then, itself a pragmatic tool we use to understand time and to be able to think, and not a description of what it actually does.

some additional, fun and fascinating reading and watching related to this:

if you want a great explanation of this ( far better then mine) find floatingheadphysics on youtube, whare he talks about time in his newer videos.
or the prefice to "Phenomenology of Spirit,by Hegel" which can also be found on youtube as read and analized, by Gregory B Sadler.

and additionally if anyone is interested:

The Ethics, by Spinoza.
Process and Reality, by Alfred North Whitehead.
Less Then Nothing, by Slavoj Žižek.

have a good day

Evaluating ideas isnt done only by looking from the outside in— thats not how you evaluate the validity of a framework— the way a frameworks validity is evaluated is by looking at itsown axioms, and seeing if it mesures up to them.

Innthe same way, you dont evaluate set theory by how well it follows the rules of calculus— they are both math, they share some axioms, but they are not starting their diferenciation from the same place.
" Oh they are using commas in the parenthesies instead of plus and minus, they have no idea how to do algebra" — yeah, cuz they werent doing algebra, they are positing an entirely different conceptual universe, and working within that.

So my recomendation is that people who want to seek more understanding— rather then only trying to "debunk" the oponents position, which we know all of us have already done to death, lets try a few other things:

0. Recognise the assumptions that yourown framework makes without evidence— what does it take as an inharent truth
1. Try to learn what the other position assumes without proof— what does it see as the foundational apriori axioms
2. Explore their views and judge them based on the axioms they presupose instead of the ones you presupose ( because again, they arent trying to build from your assptions to begin with, so their goal isnt to be accurate to standards that they dont hold, just like its not your goal to be accurate to standards you dont hold)
3. Try to evaluate the conclusions you have, against their axioms ( even tho they arent meant to fit, see precisely why they dont fit, so you not only know why theirs dont fit in yours, and why yours dont fit in theirs)
4. Consider yourepistemological limitations ( this helps in general to gain curiosity, because it clears up our perspective of just how cirtain we can be about what we know and think we know)
5. HAVE FUN! ( Like, we arent enemies for hells sake, we're all just people interested in the same subject. Just because we disagree on a couple of things doesnt mean someone is stupid, or bad, or iredeemable or somn— its philosophy, it should be serious...and seriously fun!)

Havez yourselves a chill day
.

[reguarding my motivation for asking: I tend to lean on the compatabilist perspective, tho i want to push the reasoning of each perspective since the exploration is more useful to me then keeping to my one perspective.]

Further clarification on the question:

Usually, ive seen determinists conceed the point that even in a deterministic universe, the language of free will, is nevertheless usefull, but theres got to be some phrasing that works without exiting the structure right?

Here im more interested in figuring out an approach which consistently uses deterministic logic, while at the same time

Would the argument be phrased something like:
" youre destined for something greater then this"

Would the approach be something like: " based on x research, the causal sequence has determined that cirtain kinds of arguments persuade people, and based on this, i will say Y, and depending on what they respond, ill say z or h.

— and what argument would we use if say prior results have gotten 50/50s, in terms of what is persuasive, or reguarding whether someone can change a pattern.

— and what argument could be used in a case whare no prior observations had been made to know what to do?

— what about teaching a child of intentional change, even tho it has little to no refference to go on?

Essentialy, question is, how would a determinist make the case to another or themselves, that a sequence they do not in the moment prefer, which they might find terrifying to be in, but which they recognise would or could eventually lead them to a better outcome?

NOW LETS CONTINUE ON THE PREDETERMINED PATH OF CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING!

to assemble one thing is to disassemble another.

the same substrate, the same perpetually moving substance which causes, is the very same substance which becomes the body of the effect.

causality is much stranger then we give it credit, and there is much more to discover then we tend to cover in the determinism vs free will debate.

reality appears to us both completely coherent, clear, potent, and undeniable, yet at the same time, completely foreign, unknowable.

i can clearly feel and see, but what is that feeling, why does it arrises, what is it made of?
questions we don't have answers to, and the closest science has gotten is to say " they are hormones, which are chemicals, which are particles, which are forces, which are...which are?"

and this, is perhaps the biggest indicator we have about at the very minimum, the core condition of reality which encompasses our own perception— that is, that at minimum, reality only acts in accordance to the degree to which it is able to perceive/detect itself.
that a lie can exist, speaks to the fact that even physics itself cant follow its-own rules in so far as it isn't aware of them.

and here is what i mean by " reality cant play by the rules of absolute cirtainty"— its to say that, in order for the entirety of existance to play out as a machiene, it would need to have concrete, fixed, precisely mesured elements, which then interact with eachother under exact rules— but we as humans have never been able to perfectly recreate the same conditions twice— we are allways off by some margin, and however insignificant that margin might appear to us, relative to itself, that margine is huge— i.e. compared to the milky way, i am but a speck, but compared to a quark, i might as well be the milky way in terms of relative size.
which means that, what are small elements to us, are massive elements within the scope of the relationships those small elements are in, with elements proportionally as small compared to them, as we are to those elements.
so a quarks effect is seemingly insignificant to us, but to a thing much smaller then it, those same effects are massive.

what does this mean?
someone might say " well, its only we that arent good enough to understand nature, that is the problem in perception"
but my claim, is precisely that, the very fact that we arent good enough to understand it— the very fact that we can have " incomplete comprehension" speaks to the very incompleteness of the universe we enhabit.

there is nothing to suggest to us, besides gross oversimplification, that the universe can or does account for itsown parts in a machiene like way— infact, what we conceptualise as " machiene like behaviour" is in itself an oversimplified version of what machienes actually act like.
even the closest thing we have to this perfect clockwork universe model— even it, fails in its very inability to have perfect precision.

And perhapse, this is because, there is no such thing as perfect precision— that maybe the universe is still figuring out the rules as it goes along– in the same way that any other object evolves— it is likely that the very core that all other evolution is based on— the core of the universes inner mechanism, is itself operating on a " trial and error" basis.

which means that, no initial condition can perfectly encapsulate later results, because even the initial condition itself cant account for itsown innerworking, and so, it would play out an aproximation of itself, which as it turns through time, those small errors in self detection, increase more and more, untill one day, the results are completely incomprehensible relative to what might have started off as a simple predictable process.

we mustn't forget, that every experiment we do, is framed within every surrounding cause and effect.
our isolation of variables, doesn't isolate variables, it just relates them to other variables in a more ordered way, such that there is less approximation and more precision.

but interestingly— the fact that the aproximation is still coherent, speaks to the fact that, perfection and aproximation are like two value knobs, according to which causality seems to operate.

why am i saying all of this?

im saying it in order to hopefully, open up a conceptual space within which we may continue exploring, rather then prematurely concluding.

yes, lets keep what we prefer, but lets not simply cast out what we dont, just because it doesnt make sense to us. ( and i say this to myself, as much as i say it to a libertarian, a determinist, and even a compatabilist, which i myself tend to see myself as)

to will is to cause, to want, is to cause wanting.
we cant separate causing from any action whatsoever, so perpetual causation is the root of all that can be observed. — causing, at minimum, in the sense of occurring, whether that causing has an underlying anchor it bases itself on, or whether, it is both the anchor, as well as the chain, the boat, the ocean, and the oceans surface.
— to me, it appears that causation is completely self anchoring.

that it follows the logic " i will because i will"
at the same time, with a logic which forever adds new justification " i will because i dont stop, and i dont stop because if i did, then i would not will, and if i dont will, then i couldnt will, so in order to will, i have to continue to do so"

a kind of unity if duality, a perpetual loop, but a loop which extends to fit more and more into itself.

we exist in a strange and wonderful place— so lets do our best to explore it, and create stuff and experience it as well as possible!

have great day everyone!

ill express my own view, and would love to read what you think about this.( and it relates to the sub, by talking about, what is it that we ground our ideas on)

first i want to prove that all logic systems are circular and regressive.

A = A

if A = B = C
then A = C
therefore C = B = A

any system which evaluates the world evaluates it on the basis of its-own presupposed axioms— before the system existed, there were no axioms it could use to prove itself by apart from another system, which itself was built in the same way.
hence, initial axioms are not proven, they are presupposed without evidence, and proven only after the fact, by using those same axioms on themselves and on the rest of the world— the axioms are entirely self contained and anything which is outside of them is by definition, outside of their criteria of evidence.

(if you want to skip the rest, there are 3 examples of this at the bottom, marked " EXAMPLES")

given that at best, all that we know, is known through feeling, which filters thought which itself is qualia, as is sight and hearing and so on— given that certainty is always built upon a mountain of
half-answered questions, wither looping or infinitely regressing— and given that, to be a thing, is not the same as to represent a thing— what is the advantage to overcommitting one's own thinking strictly to one singular philosophical position?

given all thease limits, how is it not a transcendental claim, to assert a perfect clockwork universe?

given the same limits, how is it not a transendental claim to say that the universe is definately probabilistic and approximate?

is all we see and know, all that there is?
and can we discover anything more without a leap of faith whareby we say " hey, idk if this is the case, and the evidence is lacking, but lets try anyway because I'm interested in seeing what happens.
— after all, this was the exact same way in which we were able to learn to speak at all.
a baby didn't have logic to justify its-own positions, all it has is esthetic preference, on itsown qualia, pleasure, pain, apathy, and calm— and on those pillars of feeling, we made a leap of faith as we got conditioned.

and then to go from there, and to lock ourselves out of our ability to make leaps of exploration, which are leaps of faith, (i mean, they cant be justified before the fact, right? )— i think there is a great danger in locking ourselves out of posibilities like this, because its simply a closure of sight.

if i can see a perspective from within, i can evaluate when i would like to use it, if ever— but if i close it as utterly impossible, then no matter if its true, if its useful, if its even necessary as something that would improve my life— i just wouldn't be able to go there, because i would have a priori decided that it is impossible— its not the thing which is impossible, its me who has deemed it impossible by virtue of my-own current understanding.
understanding is after all something we produce, not something which is out there in the world for us to passively consume.

and lets think then to what end did we close off possibility?
what is the benefit?
simply, its to give us a feeling of cirtainty— thats it, because reducing the possibility of something down to 0, is like ripping my eyes out because i think that the rest of the senses are enough.

and obviously none of this is to say that we should therefore reduce cirtainly to 0, or that we shouldnt have ourown preferences, or that we cant disagree.
Infact, its the very thing which allows us to have a genuine disagreement by pining philosophies against oneanother— by the ability of the person to be able to pin theirwon prefered philosophy, against the one they dont prefer but understand in and out, and to be able to see how the one they dont prefer, has an upper hand if they are both evaluated on the basis of the presumptions of the one we dont prefer, as well as according to the one which we do.

inversely, judging the one we dislike by the standards of what we like, is the full extent of our analysis when we operate in the absolutist regime of analysis— its like judging whether hard rock is done right by the standards of techno— obviously it wont hold up, and neither will techno hold up by the standards of hard rock.

is absence of evidence, evidence of absence?
if i ate an apple but no one knows it, did i not eat the apple?

what is the advantage to certainty when relative agnosticism is a perfectly feasible, and in-fact, id argue, is a more practical position for our ability to explore, be curious, create, and ultimately to discover new evidence.

its one thing to have a preference, but quite another to feel absolutely certain in its validity.

philosophy, dear philosophy enthusiasts, isnt a team sport — its meant to allow us to think, to allow us to understand, to allow us to take not only ourown presuposed axioms and see the world through it, but to take the axioms of the very thing we opose, and to evaluate the world and even ourown prefered axioms, according to itsown merits, in and of themselves.

determinism wasn't made to be scrutinized by libertarianism— it presupposes a different set of assumptions.
the same can be said of libertarianism, which itself wasnt made by the axioms of determinism— so why would we expect that they would conform to each-others standards of evidence?

start from either one, and you will reach yourown cirtainty— it makes no actual difference— each is the better one to itself, so how then do we evaluate which one is actually better?
is there such a thing as actually better, or is that dependent on the particular relationship it is applied within?
and i would claim that this is precisely what is the case— that, a philosophy, is always correct on itsown terms, always incorrect on the terms of its oposition, and so the mesure of which is better is seen practically in the world— which one actually produces better results for the life of the user.

philosophy is a tool, the truth is lived , and only indirectly perceived.

and so the point of philosophy, isnt to one day go " oh yeah, free will is correct and determinism is definately wrong"
its to have both of thease in a perpetual dialogue in which they refine eachother, by challenging eachother with, hopefully harder and harder questions.

we so often use philosophies as bumper stickers we apply to ourselves, in order to define what we are, but whatever we are, and whatever the world is, we are so much more then can be encapsulated with any outside representation we stick onto it.

the molds of philosophy aren't who we are— they are molds which restructure our awareness towards particular goals, actions, preferences, choices and qualia states of being.

would we want to live a world in which everyone only embraces one philosophy?
in which only determinists

this is why im a relativist
compatabilis, because it isn't just about blending both perspectives, its also about showing the necessity of both perspectives.
Since both are able to be coexistent, then they have their own local independence as phenomenon.

and frankly, in my view, it can very well also accommodate for hard determinism as well, albeit in as an occasional temporary structure, and can even accommodate for the possibility of what i call incoherentism– which is the idea that nothing is actually knowable but it only appears to be.

im a relativist compatabilist not because i think its the absolute truth, but because it gives me the means to genuinely explore the subject without
overattaching myself to only one position, thereby allowing me to temporerally comit to any position, which allows me to explore it as it was intended on its own terms.

but how can we have consistent beliefs this way?
we can, because at each situation im guided by the new evidence, but also by the posibility that the evidence is incomplete.

hell, i say, if you feel like it, try it out— and its not hard to actually do once you realise that every philosophy, every belief presuposes itsown axioms, and itsown conclusion, so to enter any belief, all thats needed is a leap of faith, and confidence that no matter what, you will try to use the best of whatever you'll learn.

EXAMPLES:

" ill eat the smaller fish so i become a big fish so that there are less biger fish to eat me— but by eathing the small fish, im doing the same thing to them, that im afraid will happen to me, thereby motivating the small fish i want to eat, to also want to become bigger, which would then increase my chance to be eaten too"

the fear of being eaten, is the same structure which produces the fear of being eaten.

the logic of determinism — everything is predetermined, therefore everything that appears indeterminate must have been accounted for by the prior causes, because if it weren't accounted for, it wouldn't be determined, therefore it cant be undetermined.

the same structure that makes things determined, makes them unable to be undetermined or freely willed.

there is no way to loop out, it closes in on itself.

there exists free will, this everything in the world is freely willed " but what about things that i didn't will " well if you didn't will them, how could they happen when everything is freely willed? so you must have willed them" and also, being able to will freely, means that you can freely willed your ability to be unable to freely will— which means that if you believed that there are things you couldn't will, then by your-own free will, thats what would have happened"

so by having free will, you have free wont, and the free wont makes you able to experience things without having freely caused them, by revoking your-own causal power and giving it to something else.
like signing a contract which says that all contracts from here on out will be signed by other people and not yourself.

circularity is not a bug of logic, its a feature of every logic.

which begs the question— is any one logic sufficient to understand and represent the world?
to which i would answer— is only algebra enough to represent the world?
or do we sometimes need also fractions, and calculus, and geometry and set theory.

is one house plus one house, the same as one bike plus one apple? or is it different?

well, its both— there isn't only one perspective we can see things with, as i hope ive proven throughout this post.

and if you want a practical methodology of how to utilize this perspective more fully, feel free to DM me( its simpler then this post might make it appear)

have a lovely day everyone

The past only had causal power when it was the past, i.e. when it existed as matter.

Causal power transfers from the present moment to the next present moment, it doesnt stay back, because causal power is in the very essence of matter.

To will is to cause in the present according to ones own inner nature.

An indirect causal relationship, is not the same thing as causation itself.

The past doesnt cause anything now, it is what the present has become.
It only caused when it was the present itself.

The outside of you and the inside of you cause eachother– its not only one or the other— it cant be– if whats outside of us causes us, then whats inside of us causes it.
Its a colaborative process of simultanious action and reaction.

There are no absolutely innert unmoving objects which are to be moved from the outside.
To be innert, isnt to be unmoving, its to be looping in a self contained locality.
A thing is innert only in relation to its abuility to move linearly(straigh), relative to another objects inability to move linearly, but abuility to move circularly.
Its not about " one thing not moving and the other moving it" its about direction of movement.
Everything moves at the same speed— the speed of the present moment— light is only talked about as the fastest in relation to its direction relative to the direction of other objects.

A humans bodys matter reverberates in roughly the same area, its not racing too move perpetually straight.

Any interaction, requires all parties in that interaction, to act themselves.

Thisnis the compatibilist argument.

All things that exist, that we know of, exist in the present moment.

The effect, is the very same matter which the cause was, when it used to have causal power.
Now, this effect is itself a cause and as such contains causal power.

The past doesnt create the present— the present creates the next present moment.

Things never arrive at " the future" — the future is the thing which is perpetually one step ahead, and the past, the thing that is perpetually one step behind.
Matter doesnt become the past, and it doesnt become the future— it allways stays the present moment.

Things are only " the future" when they are uncaused, and are only " the past" once they had cauaed and lost causal power.
Reality only appears to us in the present moment.

This is what phisics tells us about causality.

Have a good day

And why or why not?

Oh also, if you had absolute god like free will, what would you do?

Lastly— if you were wrongfully imprisoned in solitary confindment, for 50 years minimum, with no external stimuli other then the blank red brick walls, and a window too tall to see from, and a meal of your chosing per day—how would you spend your time, and what do you think would you do to not go crazy from sensory deprivation?

Have a good day