I never disagreed. I agree there is a difference. I think it may depends on what one means by determinism though.

Of course. If you mean by "determinism" "fatalism", then there is no difference between them (according to how you use the terms). But who would deny that?

I generally felt this way for a long time. At the moment I have doubts. Why? Because of Kant's idea that causality is a built-in aspect of human understanding. What if we are evolved to see things in terms of causes and effects? It's possible that this tendency does not correspond to nature.
But maybe it does. Personally, I find room for doubt.

What is your definition of hard determinism?

Hard determinism is the doctrine that determinism is true, and that determinism is incompatible with free will. But that is not my definition. That is the definition of "hared determinism".

Are you saying the cause and effect relationship is merely imagined?

lol. you criticize my definition while changing yours because you don't like it.

Do you doubt that my hunger is caused by my need for nutrition which causes me to eat? I only doubt causality in the sense that everything that is, was or ever will be was or will be caused. I believe that there was (or is) an initial state of existence that was uncaused. I believe that the idea that everything must have a beginning or first cause is derived from the fact that a causal universe is all that we know.

It was Kant's idea that causality is transcendental. Humans just automatically think in terms of causality. We also automatically think in terms of substance and quantity. He was answering the extreme skepticism of Hume.

For Kant, we don't know what reality is like apart from our automatic/transcendental structuring of it. Kant was a believer both in God and science. But he didn't think God could be proved scientifically. (I'm not an expert on Kant's attitude toward God, but this is my general take.)

Why do you say that? You asked me about hard determinism, not determinism. In any case, just because hard determinism is incompatible with free will, and because fatalism is incompatible with free will, it does not follow that hard determinism and fatalism are the same thing.

It was Kant's idea that causality is transcendental. Humans just automatically think in terms of causality.

I watched a video on this website last night where Fredrick Copleston and another gentleman were discussing Schopenhauer and it was along these same lines. I found it quite interesting.

In fact, Kant snitched it from Hume who held that the notion of causality is a habit of expectation that if A happens, then B will happen. Kant just put it into philosophese (as was to be expected).

Do you doubt that my hunger is caused by my need for nutrition which causes me to eat? I only doubt causality in the sense that everything that is, was or ever will be was or will be caused. I believe that there was (or is) an initial state of existence that was uncaused. I believe that the idea that everything must have a beginning or first cause is derived from the fact that a causal universe is all that we know.

Well when I speak of cause I?m obviously being temporal...atemporal cause is nonsense..this is precisely why I speak of Unity, of ONE...
With One and One alone there is no Cause...just Being...Cause is a temporal Metaphor for demonstrating One consistency...Cause is Circular Logic in the System, not beyond the system...how could it be otherwise ???

---------- Post added 02-23-2010 at 09:50 PM ----------

Actually this is the ultimate prof of the LAW itself...
Law is n?t caused..Law defines the causal process by force !
Emanates from Being therefore is Necessary...
(emanates IN the Being...but I say from the Being cause I am Objectifying it)

...one may even say that LAW it is Being...the TAO idea...The Way, the Path, the LAW...(...no beginning no end, just the way...)(...which means out of time...)

LAW is for me, prof of existence in the sense of noumena shown through temporal phenomena...

---------- Post added 02-23-2010 at 10:56 PM ----------

Cause is what transcends dualism, dichotomy, separatism...Cause is dialectics prof...
Prof of Unity, prof of ONE !

..

I love issues like this. Great stuff. Reminds me of Kojeve's chapter on Eternity, Time, and Concept. He traces this relationship from Plato to Kant to Hegel. It's on just such themes as this. --I'm also getting back in Kant again. What do you think of transcendental categories? Fits in to the quote above. This is the book but the chapter is mostly not there in this sample. Anyway, highly recommended. Introduction to the reading of Hegel - Google Books

Well I read Kant in the High School but I was more focus on Hegel at the time...I was fascinated with Dialectics...it somehow reminded me Einstein Relativity...now I have to go back on Kant again...it makes so much more sense... (and yes they fit)

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 12:02 AM ----------

At the time and being young I get annoyed with transcendence...(I still am)
I buy the Transcendental part, but not the Transcendence itself...
I still have this impression that the part also contains the Whole...so I focus on Hegel...

Yeah, I like Hegel more than Kant as well. It was Kojeve's book on Hegel that got me re-excited about Kant. Kant put eternity within time. If causality is transcendental, it's eternal. But causality is only conceivable as part of time. One thing follows another for a reason ("cause"). But the notion of Cause is eternal in that it's just the way our minds work. Or so runs the theory. But according to Kojeve, Hegel equates the Concept directly with Time. The Concept only becomes pseudo-eternal because it swallows its own tail dialectically. Hegel's system stands on its circularity. It doesn't need transcendence. The understanding becomes reason by exhausting its dialectical possibilities and passing Go.

I don't buy Hegel wholesale, but the man was a genius. Man(The Concept) is Time. According to Kojeve, this is Hegel in a nutshell. But of course it requires elaboration. I'm more of a fan than an expert, but damn this book gets me high.

...at the time young and foolish (I still am and that brings me somehow enlightenment...nevermind again) I saw in Hegel the possibility of linking all Sciences together...you Know jumping from Physics, to Law, or even Biology and later on Computing...daydreaming !

The totalizing temptation! It's a noble itch. To subsume and assimilate. Maybe Totality is the carrot and Philosophy is the Mule.

Rorty liked to joke about Hegel waiting at the end of the road. Probably as his Dialectic detached from his system seems descriptive of how we work. Determinate negation. We carry the scalps of yesterday's riddles along with us, seeking more scalps. Computing provides us metaphors that may help us understand biology, or the reverse.

I think that thinking is largely metaphorical and that technology provides the mind with new objects to use as metaphors. And of course new metaphors contribute to the invention of new objects.

Well, building upon building, and yet making the Old new...
...another one that still holds on me is Plato?s Reminiscence...fascinating !
(...there we go, ONE again...:detective:)

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.