Destiny

[Willamena]

...your position is based on upbringing, Intelligence, Genetics, and 1000s of variables outside your control. your emotions and subconscious are not within your conscious control either. so whether a person accepts their lack of control or not. does not grant them freedom either way.

But the "lack of control" isn't theirs. It isn't something that can be accepted, brought in, taken possession of, owned, or have responsibility for--all that is impossible because it is lacking, hidden deep beneath the mind. It's only the things that actually exist as part of the individual's mental makeup that can be owned. They are the mind, and we own them. We own control. When we start to suggest that we should own subconscious or source code things that are not in our control we have introduced magic to the mental makeup, and that's a bad thing.

Taste. Upbringing. many different variables seemingly having no connection to this choice still influenced and caused the choice. as an example.

But if it was a choice made in awareness, that's all it takes to own it. You don't have to be aware of the influences, you just have to be aware of the choice. Ownership of that choice is free will.

The dictionary that talks about choice made "free of influences" makes a specific reference to the original discussion, which is about the god that has its hand in everything we do and, especially, think. To think/act is to think/act "in god." To be "free" of influence is to have thought that is not dependent upon the god, i.e. be an individual. Obviously modern arguments have turned the causal universe into the "god" of the discussion--same effect, same purpose--but also with the same outcome: thought that is "free" of the universe's chain of cause and effect versus thought that is "in the universe." But you will still find dictionaries that reference "free will" as causal of a 'self' or individual rather than causal of things exterior to the individual. So if you are factoring in subconscious have you really gone exterior to the individual at all? A compatibilist might say no.

This compatibilist will say no.

its already fact that humans are just computers that run on genetics and environmental influence. the entire branch of the science of psychology would not work otherwise. the business world would not work if people were not predictable. predictability is done through the acknowledgment of variables and acting upon them. the subconscious itself is proven to make a decision before the conscious even has time to react or decide. it's how if I poke you with a needle you jolt back before having to think about it. or how you can trail off and stare at a women's cleavage without even realizing you're doing it. it's an impossible theory to ever fully prove as one would need to know every possible variable. you would need Omniscience. however its easily assumable if you see even 1% of the variables. every cause has an effect. the first cause was the big bang if it can be assumed that was the starting point of everything. then everything after that point is a runaway effect of dominoes. we are no exception. we are complex and unique but still bound by our nature and a reflection of the environment.

any control you have is simply a result of that, so it's not really "Free will" has its greatly if not fully influenced by everything besides your conscious thought. again though society can not function if it bases itself off that Truth. Humans are stupid after all. it only works if we base it on the Lie we have control and "Free will". so it does not really matter if you buy it or not. it just is.

To suggest that there are no things that are in our control is to suggest that we have not taken ownership of our thoughts/actions, and yet that has happened. We do that. We project ourselves as individuals. We have a whole society whose utter foundation is dependent upon the simple idea that we own our thoughts and actions. To suggest otherwise is denial of the human condition.

 

[Willamena]

He was right about mass divided by volume?

I don't remember that part.

 

[Jumi]

Depends how destiny is interpreted. Many seem to use the word as an excuse though.

 

[Club Tropícana]

Is the concept of destiny a way to dodge responsibly for one's actions or/and choices?

It depends on what you mean by destiny, people have reasons for believing in destiny on a atomic level but I don't know enough about that. What I do know is all of our actions, intentions and behaviours are pre dated by neuropsychological activity in our heads. We have no reason to believe somebody could have behaved differently than they did. This isn't a cop out or a way of dodging responsibility it's just scientific reality.

 

[Baroodi]

What you do is purely your choice. But how long you live, your gender, race, some diseases, your physics etc... Is what was destined for you.

 

[blü 2]

Physics tells us that the universe runs on a mix of chains of cause+effect, and quantum randomness (particular events to which no classical cause can be ascribed, only a statistical likelihood).

So, rather as @Father said, if we had perfect information we would be seriously predictable, perhaps tempered in a small way by random quantum effects.

(You get the same result, only stricter, if you believe in an omnipotent omniscient god, since you can never do anything except exactly what the god knew you'd do, back before [he] made the universe.)

But we don't have perfect information, and we do have the ability to make both instinctive and informed choices, and we make them all the time. Indeed, as Dumbledore said, our choices define us.

A computer can make choices. In the good old days they made them strictly in accordance with the programs you wrote. But for quite some time now they've been self-educating, some even able to alter their own programs. This has led to results both predicted and not predicted by their programmers. In this they resemble humans.

Humans also have a strong sense of self, hence the conviction that their decisions are their own. We also have little insight into the way our nonconscious brain goes about its work ─ I use the example, where were these words I'm typing in the quarter-second before I typed them? They certainly weren't in my conscious (in the sense, actively self-aware) brain. The poet Auden famously said, on this point, 'How do I know what I think till I hear what I say?'

So evolution has strongly shielded us from a sense of being automated. We're tribal creatures, and all over the world we organize our systems of justice and responsibility on the basis that we are indeed answerable to the group when our decisions become relevant to others.

Not that science is completely out of the picture. SCOTUS (under the 'cruel and unusual' Constitutional protection) held in 2002 (Atkins v Virginia) that mental retardation should rule out capital punishment. This was extended in 2005 (Roper v Summons) to the fact that the adolescent brain was not fully mature and thus the death penalty should again be ruled out. Note that these decisions go to punishment, not to guilt.

So what of 'Destiny'? First, the concept of destiny assumes predestination, and in reality the randomness of the quantum world will, we think, interfere with any such certainty. Second, the amount of data necessary to make any prediction on this basis is so enormous and so difficult to collect that even a rough stab at it is unthinkable at this stage of our knowledge and technology.

From that I conclude that destiny is a useful concept for writing romances, and for justifying one's ambition (misery, luck &c) to oneself, and so can play a psychological role; but as for being an accurately described aspect of reality, nope.

 

[Mohsen]

Is the concept of destiny a way to dodge responsibly for one's actions or/and choices?

choice/free will - the steps you took to find your destiny!
destiny - where you end up
fate - what happens to you once you are there

peace