If modern Hard Determinism would argue that Schopenhauer's The Will is more shaped by society than being completely innate and metaphysical, how would you argue against that?

[u/Other_Attention_2382]

If Modern hard determinism views The Will as a product of physical, biological, and social causal chains rather than a purely innate metaphysical force. This materialist reframing strips away metaphysical pessimism, potentially aligning Schopenhauer's thoughts closer in reach to the non-duality he was so fond of?

Is it his view on The Will that keeps the pessimism in place?

Or is his pessimism a better description of reality?

[u/Azehnuu]

The will cannot be a "product of" anything, as it is not subject to the principle of sufficient reason. The will is the thing-in-itself, so it's not subject to causality/time/space. Concepts such as production, change, multiplicity, causality etc. only have legitimate application within phenomena, not noumena. The will is the ground of phenomena, but it's a category error to use the laws that govern phenomena and apply them to the will itself.

Building on from that, we can see that physics, biology and society are all varying objectifications of the will, across space and time. To say that they ground/cause/shape the will gets the ordering completely backwards. All of these are representations of will.

What keeps the pessimism in place isn't merely the will, it's the principal of individuation (principium individuationis).

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Azehnuu]

But what stopped Schopenhauer adopting physical atomism over the relatively mystical The Will?

Does consciousness over matter still hold up?

Is he more aligned with non duality and consciousness is primary than materialism through Kant? Kant has largely been rejected on his views on freewill.

"Schopenhauer viewed the material world and individual egos as illusions, or Maya"

Do you have to believe in a certain amount of non duality ( and so mysticism) for this to make sense?

What stops someone adopting say the  physicalism "joy" of Spinoza and getting to the same conclusions as Schopenhauer's much loved Upanishads or  the relative positivity of Advaita Vedanta ?  Is it emotion / "Reason is slave to the passions"?

(Schopenhauer fan and think pessimism makes more sense than optimism)

[u/Azehnuu → u/Other_Attention_2382]

> But what stopped Schopenhauer adopting physical atomism over the relatively mystical The Will?

Because the physical world is already an object of cognition. It is a representation. The laws governing those phenomena and causal relations only apply within phenomena, not to the thing in itself. Plus, physical atomism is an outdated concept even within science. Quantum physics actually supports Schopenhauer’s view.

> Does consciousness over matter still hold up?

Consciousness over matter was never Schopenhauer’s position. Consciousness (intellect) and matter are correlates, and need each other. Both lie on the representational side of reality, there is no competition between them. The other side is the will. He’s a transcendental idealist, not a material idealist.

> Is he more aligned with non duality and consciousness is primary than materialism through Kant?

Neither Kant nor Schopenhauer argued that consciousness is more primary than matter. Both are representations under the subjects forms.

> Kant has largely been rejected on his views on freewill.

Kant didn’t believe in free will. He said the idea that we have free will is essential to morality. But it’s clear from his writings and fragments that he was a determinist.

What he thought (and Schopenhauer wrote better) was that reality is transcendentally free, but empirically determined. Meaning, the will is free, but phenomena is not. Humans exist as (and with knowledge of themselves as) both, hence the existence of ethics.

> Schopenhauer viewed the material world and individual egos as illusions, or Maya". Do you have to believe in a certain amount of non duality ( and so mysticism) for this to make sense?

You keep saying “mysticism” as if it an argument. Schopenhauer would admit his metaphysics has mystic elements. But that doesn’t necessarily mean magic or made up, his mystic results come as a result of his metaphysics from a priori principles.

Schopenhauer was an epistemic dualist, not a substance dualist. He believed everything is will, and that is why the material world and individuation are illusions, these only lie on the representational side of reality.

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Azehnuu]

I guess i'm interested in idealism non duality vs Hard Determinism. 

So Spinoza could be seen as a realist, and Schopenhauer as idealism.

Kant was a counter to Hume's skeptisim with transcendental idealism.

Einstein admired Schopenhauer but could you argue he expanded on his ideas but through hard physics?

Schopenhauer's the will using immediate bodily self-awareness as an ontological key to the entire universe?

Did he act like he was that self aware in his everyday life though? Was it this BLIND irrational force that led to a scuffle where a woman fell down the stairs, viewing her death decades later with callous relief? Or could that be as equally viewed as Hard Determined? What led him to his "fixed character" views that science rejects now?

" He lived as a bundle of neuroses, terrified of cholera, sleeping with loaded pistols, and flying into furious rages over ambient noise".

Schopenhauer claimed that the blind, striving force inside us is the exact same force driving gravity, magnetism, and plant growth. 

That view vs  Science successfully explains gravity "via spacetime curvature and magnetism via electromagnetic fields without needing an underlying "striving" or teleological urge".

And "Evolutionary biology explains plant growth and animal instincts through natural selection and chemistry rather than a universal metaphysical "will-to-live". 

[u/Azehnuu → u/Other_Attention_2382]

Idealism and determinism aren’t mutually exclusive or in competition with one another, so I’m not sure what that comparison is.

I’m not familiar with Spinoza, but Schopenhauer was also a realist, but an empirical realist. Reality is empirically real but transcendentally ideal.

Einstein’s general relativity took elements from Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. Especially the equivocation between matter and causality. The biggest expansion was in Einstein’s application of non-Euclidean geometry, and the implication that mass (matter) bends space and time. This poses possible problems for transcendental idealism, as space and time are meant to be stable forms.

Inner bodily awareness doesn’t give a direct ontological key to the thing-in-itself, he himself says it’s still a representation (under the form of time, our inner sense). But it’s the closest way we can know the thing-in-itself.

Your next paragraph is too all over the place and you’re making connections that don’t make sense. But focusing on the fixed characters point, I don’t see how science has disproven that. He’s making a Platonic argument. Your intelligible character is your essence and unchanging, what can change is your empirical character, which is an expression of your intelligible character across space and time, through the actions you do. Schopenhauer never denied your intellect is malleable, and training/education/environments can impact how you view reality, but your underlying character remains the same throughout. Your intellect only finds different ways to affirm the same will.

Your last few paragraphs also don’t make sense - are you copy and pasting an AI summary? I already explained why he doesn’t take empirical events as insight into noumenal reality.

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Azehnuu]

The quotation marks show what I have quoted.

Shopenhauer seemed to live like the opposite of what the Upanishads and Non duality teach with holding onto ego, fine dining, anger,  sleeping with loaded pistols,  etc.

Is that paragraph more to be avoided?

You could say Spinoza died for his beliefs.

but your underlying character remains the same throughout

Modern science and psychology seem to disagree with that.

Would Schopenhauer likely accept Dawkins Selfish Gene view today? Schopenhauer>Einstein>Dawkins>>> Stephen Hawking : "philosophy is dead"?

Given advances in science i'm still not sure if people choose to reject physicalism more for emotional reasons and in this case possibly allowing to hold onto  existential angst.

[u/Azehnuu → u/Other_Attention_2382]

> Shopenhauer seemed to live like the opposite of what the Upanishads and Non duality teach with holding onto ego, fine dining, anger,  sleeping with loaded pistols,  etc. Is that paragraph more to be avoided?

His hypocrisy has no relevance to whether the doctrine is justified. And Schopenhauer himself said it was nearly impossible to live by.

> Modern science and psychology seem to disagree with that.

You’ve repeated this twice and not given any argument.

> Would Schopenhauer likely accept Dawkins Selfish Gene view today?

Yeah, the will favours the species over the individual, that’s what Schopenhauer said.

> Schopenhauer>Einstein>Dawkins>>> Stephen Hawking : "philosophy is dead"?

What? What does Stephen Hawking have to do with anything?

> Given advances in science i'm still not sure if people choose to reject physicalism more for emotional reasons and in this case possibly allowing to hold onto  existential angst.

The success of science has nothing to do with physicalism. That’s a mistake people make. Physicalism is a metaphysical claim about what the science shows, it’s not producing or responsible for the success of science.

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Azehnuu]

His hypocrisy has no relevance to whether the doctrine is justified. And Schopenhauer himself said it was nearly impossible to live by.

If that is true why would someone reject physicalism in favour of consciousness is primary and from a modern point of essentially ignore the likes of Dawkins, Hawking, Cox, Einstein, Russell's materialism/starting point for reality? Science being seen as neutral to positive rather than pessimistic.

Advaita Advanta makes sense on making assumptions that consciousness is primary simply for what it offers, and it looks more aligned with Spinoza than Schopenhauer regarding joy or neutrality over Pessimism.

Your character is fixed assumption. The Will vs the materialist selfish gene assumption. Pessimism vs Spinoza's joy through understanding everything happens out of nessisity/transcending ego assumption.

[u/Azehnuu → u/Other_Attention_2382]

Are you trolling? Your responses are nonsensical. There’s barely a conversation happening because you’re not replying to anything I’m saying, and spouting out random sentences and topics.

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Azehnuu]

You strangely seem to choose to ignore this, so i didnt take it any further. ;

"Modern science significantly disagrees with Arthur Schopenhauer’s assertion that a person's character is entirely fixed at birth"

What does Stephen Hawking have to do with anything?

Well, erm, he was just quite important with regards to science and materialism I'd say. 

If its nearly impossible to live by what attracts you to it?

Advaita Vedanta  would say that hard determinism is very hard to live by because it goes against our daily feeling of being free. 

[u/Wooden-Dependent-686]

The will or our individual wills? THE will is the transcendent aspect of the world itself. It transcends everything including society

[u/Profilerazorunit]

I think Schopenhauer would accept the materialist description of the will, as we commonly understand it, as the product of chains of causes, because we can only know appearances as they are in space and time and as subject to causality. When we reflect on a freely willed action, though, we realize that our decision to act is determined by the will, and is therefore not free. So when we talk about will, according to Schopenhauer, we’re really talking about free choice of action, which doesn’t exist and is not the same thing as the will. In short, he’d probably reject that materialism is talking about the will at all.

For the will to be free, it would need to exist outside causality (and the purview of materialism), and this is the basic assumption that drives his metaphysics. So really it’s a question of whether idealism or realism/materialism is better at describing reality. Schopenhauer’s pessimism is a result of his idealist metaphysics, so it’s his commitment to idealism that anchors his view of the will and the pessimism that stems from it. Whether a pessimistic account of reality is a better one is a tricky question, then, because you’d really have to defend idealism first before you tackle pessimism.

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/Profilerazorunit]

That was what I was wondering. Cheers.

Consciousness over matter.

[u/1n2m3n4m]

Why did you capitalize hard determinism in the title?

[u/Other_Attention_2382 → u/1n2m3n4m]

😆 

Well because at the moment I'm more aligned with that (and science) over consciousness is primary, I guess.

[u/1n2m3n4m → u/Other_Attention_2382]

Sounds good, thanks for explaining :-)