“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism, the way you play it is free will.” ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
Determinism: noun PHILOSOPHY… Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs.
In this doctrine (for so it is) all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.
There are many varieties of determinism described, not including the ones we use in Supernoetics™. There is pre-determinism, theological determinism (it’s God’s fault!) and causal determinism. The latter states that all effects have causes and these causes have preceding causes, and there is a whole chain of causal events, stretching right back to the origin of Creation.
A list of a dozen varieties of determinism is provided in Bob Doyle (2011). Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy. I-Phi Press. pp. 145–146 ff. ISBN 0983580200.
Fatalism is normally distinguished from “determinism”. Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future. Fate has arbitrary power, and need not follow any causal or otherwise deterministic laws. It “just happens” but there was nothing you could have done.
Some determinists argue that materialism does not present a complete understanding of the universe, because while it can describe determinate interactions among material things, it ignores the minds or souls of conscious beings.
A number of positions can be delineated:
Immaterial souls are all that exist (Idealism).
Immaterial souls exist and exert a non-deterministic causal influence on bodies (traditional free-will).
Immaterial souls exist, but are part of deterministic framework.
Immaterial souls exist, but exert no causal influence, free or determined, we’re just “attached” to material events and are pulled along for the ride only (so-called epiphenomenalism). We’re the “ghost in the machine”.
Immaterial souls do not exist — there is no mind-body dichotomy—and there is a materialistic explanation for all beliefs to the contrary (it’s all “stuff” doing its thing and this is also the origin of thought; there are no spirit beings).
We in Supernoetics™ are closer to the idealists, meaning that everything is here because we think it’s here and reality is NOT here when we don’t work with it. Quantum physics has gradually forced on us the view that physical events only take place because they are observed to do so; the so-called “observer effect”. The tree falling in the forest is a non-event, unless humans or other sentient entities perceive that it happens (or perceive it has already happened, in the case of a fallen trunk).
So we are able to influence physical events with psychic powers (ESP). It’s a given. Unfortunately, most of us are not very good at it and cannot manifest easily. That changes as you proceed along our Golden Path. But I constantly need to point out that the “laws” of attraction and manifesting are not laws; they are abilities and need to be learned (or re-learned). Continue reading
