Kategoriak: All - causation - responsibility - determinism - beliefs

arabera Maddi Grace 11 months ago

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Metaphysical Interpretations of Reality

The debate around free will and determinism explores whether human actions are freely chosen or predetermined by prior events. Determinism posits that all events, including human actions, are the inevitable result of preceding events, leaving no room for free will.

Metaphysical Interpretations of Reality

Metaphysical Interpretations of Reality

Why is there something, rather than nothing?

The principle of plenitude
Steven hawking

All possible world really exist (multiverse)

Plato

Reality is actually as full as it could possibly be, as far removed from nothingness as possible

Quantum Mechanics
The big bang theory

A vacuum of nothingness blowup creating the universe

Depends on the physicals laws being exact laws and not patterns that may stray and change

Devine Creator/God
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Orthodoxic christen philosopher. he proposed that god created the universe out of nothing

God + Nothing = Universe

(how did God come to be?)

Some intelligible, all knowing and all capable being decided to create.

What is the meaning of life?

Existentialism
Life is ultimately meaning less unless you decide to give it meaning
Existence precedes essence

Sense there is no teleology the world was not created for a reason, and it does not exists for a reason.

We are painfully free. if there is no guideline for our actions, then we must each design our own moral compass

Not always synonyms with atheisms

Jean-Paul Sartre

He asked what if we exists first?, what if we are not born with an essence but rather we find it later?

We are condemned to be free

The purpose of life is to live authentically. Any meaning your life has is given to it by you.

Nihilism
Life is ultimately meaning less
Fredric Nietzsche
Essentialism
Plato and Aristotle

Everything has an essence. A certain set of core properties that are necessary for a thing to be what it is. Everything, Including us.

Our Essence is the purpose/meaning of our life

Does the world really exist?

Realism
Important figures: Plato, Hilary Putnam, Blessed John Duns Scotus
physical world is real and exists by itself, alone.

physical objects that have causal powers, are located in space and time, belong to natural kinds, and interact causally with each other in various natural kinds of ways.

idealism
Important figures: Slavoj Žižek, Richard Rothe, Solomon Formstecher
Reality/physical world is a sprit/consciousness
postmodernists
Important figures: Immanuel Kant,
Our “situatedness” prevents us from directly accessing the real world or having true knowledge about it.

This does not mean that the world defiantly doesn't exists but rather that it may or may not

No one has a God-eye view in order to confirm

there is no objective reality.

Does God exist?

Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas believed that a infinite regress is inconceivable and impossible.

Necessity and Possibility.

Theological Argument/Intelligent design Popularized by William Paley

The Watchmaker Analogy

If you stumbled upon a watch in the woods would you assume 1 that it spontaneously appeared on its own or 2 see the complexity of it, its parts are put together in order to tell the time And so it is reasonable to believe that the watch was made by something/someone Someone designed the watch in a way so that it can tell the time God designed the world for [A reason unknown to use but theoretically there is a reason]

The purposefulness of a watch leads use to believe of a watch maker and so the purposefulness of the world should lead us to believe in a world maker [God] [Watch = Watchmaker] = [Word = World maker]

Argument from Degrees

Properties come in degrees (a 12 inch dog is small but a 12 inch rat is huge) in order for there to be degrees of perfection, there must be something against which everything can be measured God is the pinnacle of perfection

Argument for Contingency

There are contingent things Contingent things can cause other contingent things But there can not only be contingent things because that would mean that there is a infinite regression of contingency, and possibility that nothing might have existed an infinite regress is impossible and so there for at least one thing must be necessary, God

Argument for Causation

Somethings are caused everything that is caused must be caused by something else There can't be an infinite regress of cause So there must have been a first causer, itself uncaused, and that is God

Argument for Motion

We live in a world in which things are moving Movement is caused by movers Everything moving must be set into place by something else moving Something must have started the movement in the first place

Religion and Spirituality.
Anselm of Canterbury

His proposed ontological arguments: "[God is] that then which no greater can be conceived" And so must exist. He reasoned can exist as strictly in our mind/imaginary or it can exist both in our minds and reality. Any good thing is better if it exists in our mind and in reality If god existed only in our mind he could not be the best thing we could think of because god in reality would be better.

Do we have free will?

Compatibilism
The universe operates in a law like order, the future is determined by the past. But some human actions are free

What is the difference between someone jumping in the pool and some being pushed in the pool, if the result is the same. in both cases the action is determined. But when an action of an agent is self-determined it could be considered free will.

This view holds people morally responsible sometimes

Harry Frankfurt Frankfurt cases: An agent in some cases, can be mortally responsible even when he could not have done otherwise

Librarian free will
Some humane actions are freely chosen

Principle of alternate: possibilities: an action is free only if the agent could have done otherwise.

Agent causation: An agent (person) being propelled by a mind can start a chain without having been propelled by anything else.

The physical world is deterministic

Determinism
Baron D'Holbach

"Everything is the inevitable result of what came before. Including what we do"

We believe we have free will because our minds tell us we have free will but: Mental state = Brain state = biological state And biological states are physical states and the physical world is deterministic

All actions are determined by every previous action

Nothing other then what does occur can occur

Event causation: no event can occur without having been caused by a previous event.

No free will

All actions are predetermined. the difference between physicals actions and human actions is that human actions are determined by many invisible factors. Beliefs+ Desires + Temperament = Human action