Critique My Philosophy of Life?

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I will say that your first move is to dismiss free will. The rest of the argument relies on your being free to act on the consequences of your thought. You consider whether we may or may not want to break the law, or donate to a political cause. If you have no free will, this is nonsense, except in that you are predetermined to think and write about these things in the way you have.

It seems to me a variation on the argument that, if we have no free will, we should not punish criminals, but perhaps simply keep them out of society in some way. Well, how would we do this if we have no free will? It may or may not come to be so, but the idea that we can consider the idea and then act on it relies on us having free will, the dismissal of which has brought us to the consideration.

Now, perhaps you mean to assert that free will does not exist in the way as we may normally suppose, where we consider it necessary to attribute responsibility. That, in some sense, though we can choose between options, we do not have free will. And I can't see how that makes sense.

Please note that I have edited the OP to include the direct links to my philosophy, as I am now allowed to do so.

Is "your philosophy" an attempt to "live better", or an attempt to describe the true nature of humans and their reality?

I believe in determinism, psychological egoism, and motivational hedonism, however, I don't believe in them because I think people can "live better", or have "peace of mind". I believe in them because that is how I think humans and reality function.

I haven't read it but it sounds a little like stoicism to me.

I didn't have the chance to read the whole article yet, barely been home today yet and need to go to sleep real soon.

What I might at least be able to provide is the best I could come up with when I was of the atheist/agnostic viewpoint and trying to find peace within that.

It seems like, no matter where one's beliefs come from with respect to the ultimate outlook on continuity of consciousness that there are things we can fundamentally agree on. The biggest challenge for being a full-determinist atheist is trying to figure out what to make of this life and experience as its being given to you to experience (and I use the term 'give' loosely - by either sentient or utterly nonsentient forces it makes no difference) and particularly so when it comes with no inherent meaning, no guarantees aside from death and taxes, and a constant realization that as one gets older things will keep getting stripped from them and life will essentially run in reverse. The other challenge is dealing with the evil in the world and not just dealing with your own even if you're having a hard life but also seeing all of the suffering around you and within in the lines of what's really there trying to figure out what's the best available to be made of your life inclusive inclusive of how you can best alleviate suffering.

On one hand being a full determinist and not believing in continuity of consciousness puts us in a place where there's a half eternity of blank/nonconscious nothing on either side of a normally 60 to 90 year slice of creative/geometric/sense-oriented nothing, ie. it's pure weather. On the other hand what you do have with that in terms of empathy for other human beings is even more the notion that every other node of consciousness is chained to the same ultimate fate and considering the circumstances needs, if you want to be as fair with them as you'd be with yourself, as much compassion as you can possibly give.

One of the biggest challenges with a strong atheist/determinist stance is that if life is truly going bad and with nowhere to turn for physical solutions, suicide comes up rather quickly on the list of options (which in many cases people see the suffering of existence being greater than literal nonexistence regardless of how dumb some former members of this sight may claim that sounds - they can jump up and down swearing that a person who'd say that can't possibly be accurately imagining what it would be like to quite literally not exist - they're just missing the reality that for many people quality matters more than quantity and if quantity is an evil then as much decrease in quantity as possible is demanded). If a culture were to really adjust itself to full determinism as a mode of belief it would really have to rethink its stigma on suicide and also rethink it's still somewhat psychotic reaction to the subject of death or general taboo on the topic. It's not to say that people can't help themselves (well, technically without free will you can't help but be what's inside of you but that includes an incredibly complex quantity of outcomes), its just that to have a society that has the greatest good for the greatest many we would need to go raw utilitarian, pretty much Jeremy Bentham uncut, and that takes an incredibly libertarian outlook on what we tend to consider 'ultimate' issues.

I do believe that meditation still helps and if there's anything I could implore more atheists to do who aren't familiar with this kind of logic - work in the subjective and use the subjective to your advantage. In life it's an incredible asset to attain a proper realization to the effect that how far you can go in life is controlled in large part by your degree of handle on your motivation. Your degree of handle on your motivation is manipulated best by your inner world, how you shape it, how you rest and recharge, and how you budget your energy. Similarly I'd condone something along the lines of adult imaginative play, internal dialoguing, etc. because its one of the most accessible ways for one to effect a change from within that the outside world would eventually need to accept rather than the person in question being a perpetual slave to the outside world. In this respect, while I consider the butt-hurt aspect of Laveyan Satanism to be a but unhealthy/unhelpful I do like their strive to be all that they can be as well as their willingness to use Jungian archetypes, play with ceremonial magic even for little more than their sense of its psychological payoff even if it were only brain chemicals and nothing else. Similarly finding any way possible to have a good working relationship with your subconscious mind is critical for getting the most out of yourself and out or your life possible.

If I have a particular position, I think I'm a pragmatist, and I'm certainly a pluralist. I've been reading William James of late, and it's that experience of someone else expressing your ideas in a much clearer, better thought out way. As such, I think the individual forms ideas and concepts and beliefs that help them make sense of the world, and to help them live with as little unwanted disruption as possible.

I am assuming a non-deterministic self. That is, I could choose whether or not to shave today, and it was not pre-determined that I would not. I chose not to shave. I could have chosen to shave. I had a meaningful choice, because I was free to take either option - both appealed - and I chose one over the other. So, I have free will. It is not a 'limited' free will. There are constraints placed on me, in terms of the physical and social and economic (I cannot breathe unaided underwater, or run around the streets naked without being arrested, or go out and buy a £200,000 house) etc, as to behavioural options that are open to me. But none of these mean my free will itself is limited.

As my free will is not limited - it simply is - neither is my responsibility. Responsibility need not be ultimate in the way you propose to be meaningful. Indeed, responsibility within a given circumstance is, with every choice made, already ultimate. We can plead certain mitigations, certain trying circumstances - responsibility, after all, has moral, and often legal, repercussions. We can determine that some choices should not have to be made, and work socially/politically to make them as unlikely as possible. But these mitigations start from and work on the understanding that, by and large, responsibility simply is.

Responsibility as understood and applied always-already is ultimate, unless certain factors are agreed/allowed to diminish it.

Even if I could argue for 'full' responsibility as a general rule to your satisfaction, I suppose you would argue moral skepticism? I shall have to come back to that.

Say there p123,

Is this a paper for a class? You're not expecting us to do your homework for you, are you? It's just that your paper seems so "empty" and unfinished.....is this why you're asking us to complete it for you? A little help here....

How do you see your paper in regards to our Wrong Planet forum? How did you pick this forum for your philosophic wanderings? What is the subject of "your studies?"

Just curious' are you an N.T.? Are we questioned to check for variances between us and N.T.s in terms of your "philosophy?"

denny

P.S.
And since you state you will not answer interrogative questions....only question to fulfill YOUR "unstated" purpose I would suggest no one cooperate with you until we find out the answers to OUR (not your) questions.