LISTEN. Another look at the Dilemma of Determinism today, in CoPhi (previously discussed in Happiness), and at John Kaag's "Determinism and Despair" chapter in Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life.
The dilemma of this determinism is one whose left horn is pessimism and whose right horn is subjectivism. In other words, if determinism is to escape pessimism, it must leave off looking at the goods and ills of life in a simple objective way, and regard them as materials, indifferent in themselves, for the production of consciousness, scientific and ethical, in us... (continues)
We'd have to be pessimists, if we didn't think our various regrets might ever actually lead to constructive action on our part, to ameliorate the world's deficiencies and wrongs. We'd be conceding our permanent impotence in the face of its inexorable injustice. That's the left horn... (continues)
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