Fate

[Gem]

If we choose our life paths is true, we are fated to choose.



Mr Nobody said, "As long as I don't choose, everything remains possible". Doesn't it seem that there is an infinite divide between what's possible and what is? 'This' is inevitable. 'This' is our fate.


Seems no choice about what is, but imagine what shall be. Decide on one possibility and where that path takes me, as choice closes all possible doors to leave one inevitable.

In the saying, "You reap what you sew", "sew" implies agency and intent, and "reap" implies inevitable consequence. And it's clearly true! If you plant lemon seeds there's no point praying for sweet mangoes. Make lemonade, or whatever, but you get the tree you planted.



Everything remains possible until chosen, and only one thing can happen.

[Gem]

If the OP was unclear about how there is no choice about the way it is now, yet seemingly a choice about what shall be, presents a contradiction of choice and no choice, because the choice I make now has consequences which are not chosen, and past choices have already predetermined what is happening now.


The philosophical question is not 'is there choice?' because obviously we choose and decide all the time. The question is 'what is choice?. It comes down to saying, we know there is choice because we observe that decisions are made, but we are not so clear about the entity who makes up their mind.


For most of us choice means deciding what we prefer, want, or what is for the best, and there is a process of cementing one option in place by making other options impossible. If we are someone alone in all deciding, without a God, or some basis of universal guidance, then there's no natural grounds for morality other than consequence. Just doing what you want now might have unwanted consequences, so we form a bigger picture than immediate gratification because have lives moving from past to future: stuff that happened, 'this', and the stuff that's about to happen. That's why you'd love to stay at the party, but you go home anyway because you have an early start in the morning. Discerning between preference and what is for the best, the less preferable is often the best.


The necessity of taking less preferable routes for the sake of responsibility, commitment and/or promise forms a moral framework, so the choosing individual is not subject to any pre-existing, divinely determined universal morality, but a natural moral law arises with discernment because knowing consequence gives rise to responsibility. IOW morality isn't guided choice; choice causes morality.


Even if there is no choosing agent, there is an observable choice which determines next moments. It might be possible that if one ceased to choose, all of experience would entirely cease to exist...

... however, one can not choose to not choose.

[FallingLeaves]

au contraire, everything you see around you is a result specifically of the fact that someone somewhere chose to quit choosing. We still real from it today, and everyone reaches for it like it was the elixir of life... 'sin'... fortunately you are right, it is withheld so we can't actually achieve the goal.

[Busby]

Fate - is there such a thing?

When you were a sperm tadpole swimming towards your future mother's egg you were in competition with hundreds of other tadpoles. In this case it happened to be you who reached the egg first. If there is such a thing as fate what were the other tadpoles there for?

[Starman]

Originally Posted by Busby

Fate - is there such a thing?

When you were a sperm tadpole swimming towards your future mother's egg you were in competition with hundreds of other tadpoles. In this case it happened to be you who reached the egg first. If there is such a thing as fate what were the other tadpoles there for?

What if you are all of the sperm tadpoles and the egg simultaneously trying to decide
on what sperm seed you want to fertilize the egg that will give you your human birth.
We tend to attribute the physics of this earth to matters which transcend this earth.
Maybe we are just fated to make choices that otherwise seem to be random.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Busby

Fate - is there such a thing?

When you were a sperm tadpole swimming towards your future mother's egg you were in competition with hundreds of other tadpoles. In this case it happened to be you who reached the egg first. If there is such a thing as fate what were the other tadpoles there for?

It's basically what I was saying: when one sperm fertilises an egg, he makes it impossible for the rest...

[Gem]

Originally Posted by FallingLeaves

au contraire, everything you see around you is a result specifically of the fact that someone somewhere chose to quit choosing.

Isn't that a contradiction?

We still real from it today, and everyone reaches for it like it was the elixir of life... 'sin'... fortunately you are right, it is withheld so we can't actually achieve the goal.

I don't know what the goal is, but I only want to increase my deadlift, so I train because I know what it takes to make it happen.

[Ziusudra]

Fate is like how our universe works
As we are destine to die as soon as we are born
Stars die as its course
This earth circles the Sun until its end
Fate is the law of our universe
Somehow Fate exists and its existence may be the fate itself....

[FallingLeaves]

[quote=Gem]Isn't that a contradiction?

only if you are constrained to think that both things necessarily happen at the same time.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by gem

Isn't that a contradiction?

Originally Posted by FallingLeaves

only if you are constrained to think that both things necessarily happen at the same time.

It's a contradiction because if there is a choice, you can choose to not choose, which implies you still have a choice to choose.

Fate implies there isn't a choice because the way it is now is how it is, and nothing can be done about what is already happening. If there are options, then different things remain possible until a choice is made, which makes one option inevitable and the others impossible.