[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:29:13 -0500

A.A.  
> What laws? 


The laws of physics, of course.
Good parenting cannot alter the laws of physics no matter how much you wish it 
could.  

I see no difference between your 'luck' and my 'fate', both speak of events 
beyond our control.  

A super-determinist would say (I think) that not only is everything beyond our 
control, but that there's no such thing as 'control', not as such, that there's 
only what is and what is is 'in ipso, per ipso, ex ipso control' -- or 
something like that, or another way of not explaining it: that there are no 
laws of physics, there's only physis which is what is because it is as it is.  
There's no separable governing principle, there's just physis.  I love this 
kind of talk.  Sounds profound but who knows what it means?  I think know why 
they say that,  but I'm not sure I agree.  You say in your post you're a 
determinist, but everything you argue argues against that.  

A.A. (responding to: "I have no idea to what degree determinism 'determines' 
our lives.")

>Luck, how well we're nurtured and how well our genes hold up.

I don't know what this means.


A.A.  (responding to: "But maybe we're not determined.  Perhaps we are agents 
acting variously freely in the world.  Are we?")

>If we're free agents, then we're evil.  Thrown out of Grace, etc.  

I don't know what this means either.


A.A.(responding to: "We don't have any choice but to live our lives as though 
we are creatures of free will.")    

>Then we're evil.  Or lying to ourselves.


I don't know what this means either.  


Mike Geary
Memphis


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