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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25859 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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But what caused those personal choices? If you were them, you would have made the same ones.

If I was them I would be them and not me. I cannot think of a meaningful sense in which you could say "If you were them".

I'm sympathetic to the idea that environmental or genetic factors may make it more or less difficult to not make choices that will give you a chronic disease. That would change the level of responsibility, but unless someone held a gun to your head you've still got some responsibility.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

If you were born with the same genetics and raised by the same family and had the same exact life and experience you would be in the exact same place as them, because you would be them.

Yes, if I was them I would be them.

And the same things would happen to you. We have the data, it happened. If you were them you would be in the exact same situation. They can't have made other choices, or they would have.

If I was them I wouldn’t be me, as you’ve said, so it’s a pointless statement to say “if you were them”. It’s like sayin “If X was Y, then X would be Y.” Which is tautologically true, but provides us with no new information. If I was a cat I’d be a cat. If I was Hitler I’d be Hitler. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.

I find this exchange a little amusing in light of your pro-Arminian tendencies that we were just discussing: I would have thought that meant that you thought that choices were not sufficiently determined by one's character and history and circumstances, while here you seem to argue that that does suffice.

If there is anything beyond our character and history and circumstances that informs our choices (personality, perhaps? Ineffable soul?), then it would still be the case that if I was him (in other words, had his character, his history, his circumstances, and his everything else that makes him him) I would be him and not me.

Perhaps what I meant is that I thought that you would think that our choices are not determined, that I thought you would think that there exists no set of things that would ensure that you make the same choices. (sorry, that's wordy)

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