Essential Philosophy: How to know what on earth is going on by Molyneux Stefan

Author:Molyneux, Stefan
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2018-10-21T21:00:00+00:00

Determinism and Emotional Investment

I am fully aware that my charge of “emotional investment” could very easily be turned back on me. I openly accept that and have talked about it publicly many times. If I ask people, “Why are you so emotionally invested in determinism?” they can very fairly ask me the same question – “Why are you so emotionally invested in free will?”

Here we can talk about the unspoken risks of determinism.

Falsely believing in determinism can strip you of love, life, value, enthusiasm, courage – all the most wonderful aspects of human existence – and this risk is rarely talked about when confronting the question of determinism.

If you are a determinist, you will probably do little to protect your values – while those who accept free will strive mightily to advance theirs. If you are an atheist and a determinist, you will lose – your entire belief system will lose – in the endless back-and-forth tussle of physical and intellectual human combat. This helps us understand why less rational belief systems are spreading and growing throughout the world, while the West falters and fails.

Through relentless materialism and secularism, we have created generations of deterministic, nihilistic, socialistic and empty atheists and agnostics – and now we are losing our freedoms. Determinists lose to those who believe in free will, because determinism is a false position, and it undermines our desire to maintain our hard-won freedoms. What is the point of political freedoms, if we don’t even have free will? Would you sign a petition to grant human rights to a rock garden? Would you fight for the right for a statue to do yoga? Would you march and protest to give your smartphone the right to vote?

Bad reason is worse than good faith. A priest who gives you good medicine is better than a doctor who gives you bad medicine.

The danger of the determinist position is that by not believing in free will, our capacity to exercise free will is destroyed.

I am willing to give up deeply held positions if the reasoned arguments are sufficient, and if the evidence overwhelmingly supports the new position. I was a socialist, a Christian, an Objectivist, and now I have moved beyond those positions – although I treasured them greatly at the time – because accumulated reason and evidence have overwhelmed my original beliefs.

However, I cannot rationally change my mind about my capacity to change my mind. I cannot use my capacity to choose to deny my capacity to choose. I cannot use free will to deny free will.

The fact that accepting the determinist position would also strip my life of love, passion, meaning, purpose and joy is a purely emotional argument – I understand that. And such a sandblasting of happiness is not at all a rational counterargument, but I bring it up as something I am emotionally aware of, and to give you, the dear reader and listener, the honesty of a fair evaluation of my emotional state.

I am also fully aware

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