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Updated page on Determinism books
Book: Richard Double:
Metaphilosophy & Free Will
Books: Determinism, Necessity,
predestination
Bobzien's book: Stoic determinism/Fatalism
The Story
of Philosophy: The Essential Guide to the History of Western Philosophy
Bryan
Magee
$29.95
Hardcover:
240 pages; (October 1998)
Dimensions
(in inches): 0.98 x 11.17 x 8.85
Publisher:
DK Publishing; ISBN: 078943511X
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/078943511X
Another
communication breakthrough from DK Publishing
I have
read several books published by DK Publishing, including The Complete
Guitarist, Amsterdam, the oversize Religions book, the big Religions book, and
The Story of Philosophy. DK Publishing
has mastered the effective integration of fine multimedia page layout with
top-notch writing, resulting in effective presentation of information.
I have
read several introductions to Philosophy -- this book finally brought it all
together in my mind. That's partly
because my reading techniques have improved and my base of knowledge has
improved, but the excellence of the format and content and writing style surely
deserve most of the credit. The book
completely achieves what it sets out to do.
I
recommend the wonderful full-scale hardcover version of this book. Whether you are intensely focused on
philosophy or are casually interested, I strongly recommend reading this
introduction before others. I think the
DK series amounts to a breakthrough in effective presentation of
information.
I am
looking forward to books by this publisher on more topics, and am looking
through their catalog to buy more books related to history, philosophy, and
religion. These books also make
excellent gifts, and when I need a gift book on a subject, I look first to DK:
for example, their 2001 catalog shows no book about Judaism, so I had to look
around for a "D&K-style" presentation by another publisher on the
subject.
D&K
has become a high standard by which to compare other publishers, particularly
for presenting solid, useful introductions to non-fiction subjects. The word "introduction" is
inadequate: the D&K approach to presenting information effectively provides
the main, central enlightenment about a subject, in a rich multimedia way that
stays vivid and fresh after finishing the book.
The DK
Publishing approach to presenting information has proven that text content does
not need to be compromised when integrated with graphic content, and has shown
how pictures and text can work together to build up comprehension and clarity.
http://www.egodeath.com/determinismbooks.htm
The
Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control - John Martin Fischer, 1996
Responsibility
and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility - John Martin Fischer, Mark
Ravizza, 1998
Metaphilosophy
and Free Will - Richard Double, 1996
God,
Foreknowledge, and Freedom - John Martin Fischer (ed.), 1992
Determinism
and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy - Susanne Bobzien, 1999
The
Non-reality of Free Will - Richard Double, 1991
The
Implications of Determinism - Roy Weatherford, 1991
Agency
and Integrality: Philosophical Themes in the Ancient Discussions of Determinism
and Responsibility - Michael White, 1985
Free
Will and Illusion - Saul Smilansky, 2000
Living
Without Free Will - Derk Pereboom, 2001
Persons
and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will - Timothy O'Connor, 2000
_______________
Tenseless
Time
Time's Arrow
& Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time - Huw Price,
1997
The End
of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics - Julian Barbour, 2000
Unsnarling
the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem - David Ray
Griffin, 199x
_______________
I am also
working on a general format for book entries at my site. This should be an excellent approach and an
appropriate way to use Web-based presentation for a more convenient approach to
scholarly investigation. I definitely
need to add book-cover pictures.
A nicely
presented overview of the available books can effectively reveal the direction
of trends, such as books covering the block universe, pre-existing future,
inevitability, ancient concepts of Fatedness, entheogen approaches, and
entheogenic origin of Western religions.
______________________
The Non-reality of Free Will - Richard Double, 1991, $60
This book, like most determinism books is fairly conventional and unimaginative -- it seems to lack awareness of the new theory of tenseless time and the B series of time slices (Nathan Oaklander) without a time-journeying continuant agent.
Such theorists just read each other incestuously and haven't encountered time face-to-face in the loosecog state.
They all unconsciously stay within the same conception of time, and debate within that shared background assumption. But time is the crux of the matter and to break out of the ruts of thinking about unfreedom, we must develop a different model of time.
Richard Double talks of hierarchical compatibilism but it's not what I expected. I expected him to adopt my view of metaphysical determinism or prexisting-/fixed-future Fatedness at the hidden level, with virtual, apparent, as-if, effective, practical freedom at the experiential level, and a great divide in between these two levels.
But instead, he makes some other type of hierarchical distinction. The Non-Reality of Free Will looks like an OK book, not one I'd pay $60 for.
I do like the way he tries to frame free will as a just plain hazy, incoherent, ill-defined, *vague* concept. This fits with my strategy of seeking simplicity, seeking the intense ego-death experience, seeking whatever metaphysical model causes the accustomed sense of metaphysical freedom to cancel itself out.
Determinism is always defined to include predictionism and reductionism, which I reject as irrelevancies and distractions that can only lessen the credibility of determinism, in basically the same way Double warns about in long-shot free-will theories that are married to supposed quantum indeterminacy and thus cast into doubt.
Such conventional determinism, practically based on reductionism and predictionism, is really every bit as doubtful and ridiculous as free will theories that are based on quantum indeterminacy.
__________________
Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy - Susanne Bobzien, 1999
This book is more thoroughly innovative; that is, different than the blind, circular determinism debates that keep recycling the same ruts of thinking. It is a remarkable work of scholarship, which I think of in a negative sense: why do we think scholarship is grand and respectable, when it really should be seen as a symptom of disgraceful scrap-recovery from among the burnt ruins of the ancient libraries.
"Scholarship" is a euphemism for "post-destruction scrap recovery".
The single most potent idea I got from this book so far is that the main subject of philosophical debate from around 125 BCE to 250 CE was Stoic universal causal determinism.
o What did the ancient leading thinkers consider to be the most valuable experience? Mystery-religion initiation.
o What was the hottest topic of philosophical debate during that same era? Stoic universal causal determinism.
o What year was ground zero, the real year zero at the center of the mystery-religions? I'd say 70 CE (fall of the Jerusalem temple) or 125 CE. 70 is the safest, most definite year. Not 30 -- that was only assigned as ground zero a couple hundred years later. The true peak of mystery-religion syncretism was more like 150 CE.
o What mystery religion came immediately before Christianity, in Paul's region of Tarsus? Mithraism.
o What was Mithraism about? Transcending astrological determinism.
o What was the main product of Tarsus? Scholarship and philosophy.
o What was the dominant philosophy in Tarsus? Stoic philosophy.
o What was the main, most prominent aspect of Stoic philosophy? Universal causal determinism/inevitability/fate.
In summary, what two most-important features stand out, again and again, in the thinking world during the peak of the ancient Hellenistic religions?
o Mystery-religions.
o Universal causal determinism.
Could it be that these two are intimately related? Mystery-religion experience is triggered by entheogens which reveal an encounter with universal causal determinism as a kind of death of the self, yet the person lives past the experience, having in some way conquered death.
David Ulansey's theory of Mithraism -- immediate local precursor to Christianity -- points the way. In the mystery initiation, the initiate encounters and battles with universal causal determinism, dies in a way and is victorious in a way, and lives through and somehow transcends universal causal determinism.
My ego-death theory is not simply derived from Ulansey's, but as I expected, the pieces are falling into place as required to confirm my core theory that the intense ego-death experience is essentially concerned with some kind of self-control seizure upon mentally grasping and encountering a static-time, fixed-future world-model.
I'm tempted to call this a visionary encounter with "determinism", but that term has been ruined by people who insist on wedding it, for no good reason, with the irrelevant long-shot assumptions of prediction-ability and reductionism playing out over time, within time.
Metaphilosophy
and Free Will - Richard Double, 1996:
http://www.egodeath.com/determinismbooks.htm#_Toc518056553
How the
freewillists and determinists talk past each other because they have different
purposes and motives in philosophizing.
Explains
the crossed communication in the debate.
Still I am dissatisfied with the standard formulation of determinism
always in terms of domino-chain predictionism with the future not existing yet,
with no room for true randomness.
A simpler
and more robust model is to assume a single future that already exists. Whether it is true or not, such a system can
easily be visualized, and considering this system is the quickest way to an
ego-death experience.
Book list
at Amazon.com:
Block-universe
determinism, Necessity, divine predestination
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Block-universe
determinism, Necessity, divine predestination"
I expect
to evaluate this book soon. According
to David Ulansey's Mithraism book, Stoicism was the strongly dominant
philosophy of Tarsus, and the Hellenistic Mithraic mysteries started in Tarsus
less than a century before Christianity, when the precession of the equinoxes
was discovered (setting us free from astrological determinism, so the people of
the era seem to have thought).
To
understand the mystery religions, we must understand that the ancients were
"cosmic fatalists". I think
it would be an anachronism to use the contemporary term
"determinists", just like it would be inconguous to say the ancients
used "psychedelics" as sacraments, instead of saying
"entheogens" or "psychoactive mixtures". We insist on defining
"determinism" as reductionistic predictionism, but the mystery
experience does not present determinism to your mental eye; rather, it presents
Fatalism.
Reductionistic
determinism is merely a later attempt to formulate a proto-scientific
hypothetical model of physical reality that accords with the mystery-religion
perspective. In this way, determinism
is merely a vulgarized and degraded form of Fatalism. Determinism in the age of the Stoics was a completely abstract
hypothesis, whereas Fatalism was an experience and an object of perception (or
apparent perception).
Determinism
and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy
Susanne
Bobzien
$85.00
(Amazon: full price, not in stock.
B&Noble, in stock for $80.75)
Hardcover
(1998, March 1999)
456 pp.;
0-19-823794-4
Clarendon
Pr; ISBN: 0198237944
Paperback:
List
$26.00
Barnes
& Noble Price: $20.80 (you save $5.20 (20%))
Readers'
Advantage Price: $19.76
This book
will be available in September, place your advance order now.
Format:
Paperback, 456pp.
ISBN:
0199247676
Publisher:
Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Pub.
Date: September 2001
"The
definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual legacies of the
ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She explains what it
was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their views on
possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She
demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas
retain today."
"The
first comprehensive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of
the ancient Greek world: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. The book
identifies the main problems that the Stoics addressed and reconstructs the
theory, and explores how they squared their determinism with their conceptions
of possibility, action, freedom, and moral responsibility, and how they
defended it against objections and criticism by other philosophers."
"This
is an awe-inspiring work....It is extraordinarily ambitious. It aims to recover
and understand, so far as the sources allow, the entire early Stoic theory of
fate, causal determinism, and responsibility. It achieves this ambition while
at the same time showing how immensely more difficult the task is than anyone
had appreciated before....It will most certainly be the first work that
everybody interested has to get to grips with. They will have to start here
both because the book is a model of scholarly method and because it is an
outstanding example of lucid philosophical thinking in an area where clear
thought is extremely difficult." -- Miles Burnyeat, All Souls College,
Oxford
Contents
Introduction
1.
Determinism and Fate
2. Two
Chrysippean Arguments for Causal Determinism
3.
Modality, Determinism, and Freedom
4.
Divination, Modality,and Universal Regularity
5. Fate,
Action, and Motivation: The Idle Argument
6.
Determinism and Moral Responsibility: Chrysippus's Compatibilism
7.
Freedom and that which Depends on us: Epictetus and Early Stoics
8. A Later Stoic Theory of Compatibilism
Bibliography;
Indexes
_______________________________
My
university library has this in hardcover for $85 but now it's finally shipping
in paperback for $27.
Determinism
and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, by Susanne Bobzien, March 1999.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199247676
"Bobzien
presents the definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual
legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She
explains what it was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their
views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other
topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that
these ideas retain today."
My
gathered info:
http://www.egodeath.com/determinismbooks.htm#_Toc518056556
"The
definitive study of one of the most interesting intellectual legacies of the
ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She explains what it
was, how the Stoics justified it, and how it relates to their views on
possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She
demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas
retain today."
"The
first comprehensive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of
the ancient Greek world: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. The book
identifies the main problems that the Stoics addressed and reconstructs the
theory, and explores how they squared their determinism with their conceptions
of possibility, action, freedom, and moral responsibility, and how they
defended it against objections and criticism by other philosophers."
"This
is an awe-inspiring work....It is extraordinarily ambitious. It aims to recover
and understand, so far as the sources allow, the entire early Stoic theory of
fate, causal determinism, and responsibility. It achieves this ambition while
at the same time showing how immensely more difficult the task is than anyone
had appreciated before....It will most certainly be the first work that
everybody interested has to get to grips with. They will have to start here
both because the book is a model of scholarly method and because it is an
outstanding example of lucid philosophical thinking in an area where clear
thought is extremely difficult." -- Miles Burnyeat, All Souls College, Oxford
Contents
Introduction
1.
Determinism and Fate
2. Two
Chrysippean Arguments for Causal Determinism
3.
Modality, Determinism, and Freedom
4.
Divination, Modality,and Universal Regularity
5. Fate,
Action, and Motivation: The Idle Argument
6.
Determinism and Moral Responsibility: Chrysippus's Compatibilism
7.
Freedom and that which Depends on us: Epictetus and Early Stoics
8. A Later Stoic Theory of Compatibilism
Bibliography;
Indexes
I don't
necessarily recommend that as the first book to read or the clearest book. What we need is a history of ideas about
determinism in its many guises.
Everyone
interested in determinism should read Richard Double's Metaphilosophy and Free
Will - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195107624 - explaining the
different motives of what I'd called the freewill *moralists* versus the
determinist *philosophers*. I had
already concluded what this book lays out systematically: that philosophers who
advocate freewill are motivated by desire to prop up conventional moral agency
and moral thinking, while philosophers who advocate determinism are motivated
by desire for a coherent model of the world -- the debate amounts to morality
versus truth, or the moralists versus the truth-seekers."
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