You don’t believe Determinism? Great, differing opinions are what makes the world go ‘round. Let me ask you this: When did you decide that you don’t believe in it?
Oh, I see. You didn’t really decide, per se. It’s just how you’ve always felt. I see.
What do you think caused you to feel that way? Any idea? Was it something you read? Something someone said to you? Maybe just the way you were raised?
No, it’s ok that you don’t have an exact answer for it. There are lots of influences that bring us to the beliefs we hold, aren’t there? Ironically, though, my belief in determinism has a very direct cause. It began with a lecture I listened to, on the subject of free will, and it made a lot of sense to me when I heard it. Much the same way that it doesn’t make any sense to you.
Now, I have to ask myself, why did it make sense? Well, I have no idea, do I? I don’t know what about the lecture caused this idea to click in my head, to answer the unasked questions in my mind. Can you tell me why it doesn’t make sense to you?
No, I don’t mean a list of reasons. Those reasons are just subjective, aren’t they? I realize they may seem like objective facts, but an objective fact still has to meet with our ability to understand it, right? If I said water is wet and you didn’t think that was true, well, that’s an objective fact but for some reason it doesn’t sit the same in your reality as it sits in mine.
So when I say, “Why doesn’t Determinism make sense to you?”, I’m not looking for a list of objections, I’m looking for the reason it doesn’t make sense. Or, to put it another way, I’m looking for the reason that those objections do make sense to you. Follow?
I’ll give you time.
Can’t come up with a good answer? That’s totally understandable. I couldn’t either. If you asked me why ‘water is wet’ makes sense to me, I couldn’t come up with a reason. If you asked me why ‘I am alive’ rings true to me, I also couldn’t come up with a reason. If you asked me why determinism makes sense to me, I couldn’t tell you. I could just as easily have felt like you about the matter had circumstances in my life conspired a little differently. Do you agree?
Determinism isn’t the belief that we cannot make choices in life, or that the choices we make don’t matter; it’s the belief that we cannot choose what we are going to choose.
Put another way: We can make a choice, but our choice isn’t random. It’s determined.
We cannot choose how things effect us.
Our actions are based on how things effect us, and we cannot choose how things effect us. Therefore our choices are determined by forces outside ourselves.
If we choose to act opposite to our best interest, that is still a choice based on circumstances. Why did we choose to act that way? We wanted to be contrary.
But why did we want to be contrary? To prove a point.
But why did we want to prove that point? Because we believe we’re right.
But we do we believe we’re right? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Eventually you run out of causes you can attribute to your own conscious will.
The Vulcan Buddha 