<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">You are talking only about those cases where the determining factor is completely powerful.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">Towards the end of my teaching career I got rather average student evaluations. I attributed this to my not inflating grades the way the others were doing (I checked their grades). Suppose I did go along. Were the student evaluations determining my increasing the grades? But I didn't. I determined to stay the same. If the dean had threatened my tenure I would have changed - powerful determinant. So to a certain extent we do choose our determinants. Ballard, you are using the word in a different way than I am. bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:50 AM SR Ballard <<a href="mailto:sen.otaku@gmail.com">sen.otaku@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the illusion of choice. <div><br></div><div>If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever decided that was the way to talk about it.</div><div><br></div><div>If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt. </div><div><br><div dir="ltr">SR Ballard</div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Jul 18, 2021, at 8:25 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 23:39, SR Ballard <<a href="mailto:sen.otaku@gmail.com" target="_blank">sen.otaku@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">So they’re determined except that they aren’t. That’s not very clear. If they’re determined, like Pavlov’s dog, we only have the illusion of choice. <div><br></div><div>If by “determined”, you mean influenced, then sure, I’d say that free will and determinism are compatible. Otherwise I think it’s a bucket of hogwash. </div><div><br></div><div>If people really can’t ever control their actions, we need to radically change society, but we can’t, because everything is inevitable. Or maybe we will, because it’s inevitable. <br></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You can't control your actions UNLESS they are determined. An undetermined action is one that is truly random, and you can't control a truly random event. The best you can hope for is that undetermined events occur infrequently or only when the outcome doesn't matter, such as choosing ice cream, when the worst that can happen is that you get a flavour you don't like. <br></div></div></div>
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