batou

[/font]Then perhaps go read the posts again. I have also already seen all the videos you have linked and found them unconvincing. What implications does determinism have on psychology? I would say none at all, while the implications of free will on psychology are clear. For example, belief in free will would give the believer a sense of agency and something to use to manipulate the behaviour of others (by using guilt and punishment). Would you consider, that perhaps you hold the belief in free will, because of psychological reasons? Also, there are several existing interpretations of quantum mechanics and some of them are deterministic. http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/p/37334/289321.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

I say them as I am determined to. You say them out of your free will, so I guess you are responsible .

1. I can write a function on a deterministic machine, that seeks to know weather something is true or false. 2. If a human creates a deterministic machine and write a program on it, does it stop being deterministic? 3. He can't be talking about universal experiences, since my experience is that the world is deterministic. I never said to bow down to me, I was simply saying that the onus of proving something is on both sides, for determinism and for free will. Free will isn't obvious, as Rothbard says, he simply shifts the burden on proof on determinists and takes free will as a given. 4. Yes, to cause and effect and determinism. No to religion. I don't see a cognitive disconnect, where is it? 5. I don't have all the data, so I could make such predictions. Also making predictions doesn't prove or disprove determinism.

A mind doesn't need to have free will to make conclusions about reality, as it can be determined to seek seek truth from the start. A computer program also chooses (conditional if statements), does it have free will? My primary impressions are that determinism is true. I am a man, so he is not speaking for all of us. It is as much the onus on determinists to prove determinism, as it is for free willers to prove free will. But the more we know about causes to events, the more it all seems deterministic to me. The extent of my knowledge may be determined, but I don't know to what extent it was determined. Perhaps I was determined to know everything, but probably not. For the second part, no, we can't freely revise knowledge, whatever that means. But we can deterministically revise knowledge based on new data. Determinism simply says, that the state state at time t=t+1 is determined by the state at previous time t=0. We have two worlds, they are absolutely the same up to a point in time. In universe 1, there is a person, that beats his children. He continues to do so up to time X and continues to do so, until he dies. In universe 2 the same person does the same. He beats his children, but just before time X, he comes into contact with freedomainradio and he stops beating his children. A free willer would say, that the person in universe 2 stopped beating his children out of free will. A determinist would say that both outcomes were equally determined, but the circumstances in universe 2 were not the same (in universe 1, the person never knew about freedomainradio), so the outcome was also different.

To think that someone can be right or wrong doesn't invalidate determinism. I will try to demonstrate this with a hypothetical scenario (similar to what I think has been going on with humans). Imagine that we create millions of little robots that we know are deterministic, we program them to want to live, we write their code so they will seek and do stuff, that will prolong their activity. This already provides them with a preferred state, life over death. We also add another feature to them, we want them to be able to mutate, so we make their code sensitive to pseudo-random data from the environment. Now millions of these little deterministic robots are going around the world and mutating. Some of them don't mutate, most stop working because of mutations, but in some the code improves. They can now make models of the world. They start to understand how to avoid death better. They get the capacity to create models of how the world works and can now judge what to do: If I do this, that will happen. Another mutation occurs and some develop the ability of language. With the acquisition of language, they can now compare their models of the world, between each other. And each of these can now judge whose model (they think) is correct, and which one is wrong. Some of them can't reach a conclusion and they agree to disagree. I hope this demonstrates how the concepts of right and wrong could exist between deterministic robots.

bbeljefe, perhaps I should have been more clear. I agree with you, that the conflict can be resolved without violence, but the point of Girard is exposing the whole mechanism, from mimetic rivarly to scapegoating. When a crisis occurs (this might be a plague, an economic downturn...), the mimetic rivarly may get more and more intense (it might still be non violent at this point, like the current economic crisis, or Germany around 1930). Stress and/or violence builds up and the community eventually finds someone to kill. This fixes the crisis and reunifies the community, but only temporarily. I never said they weren't, but you seem to be pretty quick about the idea, that "mimicry" can have such an effect. Also mimetic desire (which is all desire) was acquired at some point in time, either present or past, so of course, the past is important.

I also need to correct myself, I said that Girard shows that we are inherently violent, this is a misrepresentation of Girard by my part. What Girard would say is probably closer, that we are inherently mimetic and that mimesis leads to rivarly, which leads to violence. This is not to say that every mimesis leads to violence, but there is a potential to lead to violence, especially when the desire is "internally mediated," as Girard calls it, that is when subject and model are close by (by proxinity and social hierarchical position).

Girard traces back the creation of states and political power to the scapegoat mechanism: From Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture) by Wolfgang Palaver http://www.amazon.com/Girards-Mimetic-Studies-Violence-ebook/dp/B00AYTH57I/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1366992455&sr=8-6

Quoting Girard Perhaps I should have said differently, we are not inherently violent, that violence somehow occurs from a vacuum, but that violence is the inevitable outcome of mimetic conflict. Not that it arises from every mimetic conflict, but that it does from some and that this is inevitable (or has been so far, perhaps we can find better ways to identify and stop it). I have concluded (my conclusion, not Girard's) that we are inherently violent from that (by Girard), we have been going through this conflict (mimetic conflict spiraling into a mimetic crisis) throughout most of our evolution and then something happened, we figured out a way to resolve this conflict and unite people, create societies - the scapegoat mechanism. Children are not exempt from mimetic desire: http://www.jeramyt.org/papers/girard.html I agree though, that in a world of abundance and empathy, there would be less mimetic conflict such as this above, but it would still exist, this type of mimetic conflict is inevitable: Girard and the Oedipus complex http://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#SH2d I have found an interview/documentary on Girard, it's the best, most conprehensive, that I have found yet. Though it's quite long.

And the implications of his theory on libertarian ideas. From a philosopher that I think will become very prominent with time. He shows that we are inherently violent and that our desires have a mimetic nature, that is, that we copy our desires from observing other people (triangular nature of desire - subject, model and object, the subject gets it's desire for the object from the model) and that this inevitably leads to conflict. Quoting Girard, from Violence and the Sacred: For example Stefan is being a model for people's desires on FDR. He models a way of life, he shows himself as having "being," the right way. If all desire is sourced externally, this invalidates the idea, that our deires could be generated by a true self. Desiring the same object as other individuals, when the object is scarce, leads to conflict. Which leads to a mimetic crisis: Girard says that all cultures are based on murder. Perhaps more to come. I will provide a few links for those interested (couldn't be more recommended): Lecture, not so much about Rene Girard.. Some about the scapegoating mechanism and scapegoating jews in WW2 and how states kill the stateless in a crisis. Very exciting lecture Interview: http://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Girard essay on Christianity and Nietzsche http://www.jesslayton.com/jessweb/Essays/Girard.VS.Nietzche%20-%201999.pdf

Yes, but as said before, only if they subscribe to the principle. If they believe that coercion is wrong in every instance and are still statists (state uses coercion), then they are hypocrites. But if they don't hold this principle, but hold for example another one: that coercion wrong in some instances, but right in other, then you can't call them hypocrites.

This is what I was arguing.

That's true, but I don't think feminists subscribe to this principle.

Which I bet are similar to something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem At some point you are going to have to defend murder.

In that case why bring out rape in the first place? If you define coercion (lack of consent) as immoral, then anarchists might be the most consistent (not hypocritical) I might agree, but there is no reason to showcase rape. From my point of you bringing out rape is problematic, because blaming people for approving rape is used as shaming language. An example of this would be saying to a statist, that because he approves of coercion in some cases, that he automatically approves of rape.