Hatred is also a choice, and I will leave it at that.

[Chiki]

Are you implying that if your body does something, you yourself consciously do it? I do not understand your scenario.

It's actually not my scenario. It's very famous, and I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwCompatFrankfurt.htm for more details.

Have another, I suppose. Say that I choose to kill you, but I miss and only wound you. I would argue that what "I" did was choose to make an attempt to kill you. To say that I chose to kill without qualifications you would be stupid because killing you requires things from the environment that I do not have control over. My gun can fail to fire or my arm can spasm. These are not things that "I" do.

Maybe you're getting this wrong because English may not be your native language, but I'm pretty sure "choose to kill" means exactly the same thing as "choose to attempt to kill. " People use the two interchangeably all the time. Just because you say you "chose to kill" someone doesn't mean it's foolish to expect things from the environment. You can choose to kill someone regardless of the possibilities of failing. They just mean the same thing, and there's no contradiction involved. Intuitively, we choose to kill someone, and the consequences of that choice may result in failure or not. That has no bearing on what the choice actually is.

Using hate in the nurtured, long term resentment sense

I'm not using hate in any other sense. I'm just using dondon's definition "feeling of intense dislike." You don't need any other sense of hatred other than his.

To see how this is possible, there's this phenomenon in psychology called "habituation." You get habituated to stimuli the more often you are exposed to it. Hence, you stop feeling intense dislike as you see it more and more often because you get so used to it.

Habituation is a decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations. For example, a novel sound in your environment, such as a new ring tone, may initially draw your attention or even become distracting. After you become accustomed to this sound, you pay less attention to the noise and your response to the sound will diminish. This diminished response is habituation.

I suspect this is what is involved in ending the feeling of intense dislike upon seeing some stimuli. There's no long-term sense of "hatred" here; it's just irrelevant.

Doing otherwise has everything to do with the ability to reflect

See Harry Frankfurt's case that I showed you above. The idea of that case is that one has the ability to reflect without having the ability to do otherwise. It's true that generally, doing otherwise is the consequent of the ability of reflection. But they are not necessarily seen in conjunction. This is what I meant when I said they have nothing to do with each other. You can reflect without doing otherwise, and you can do otherwise without reflecting.

Reflection also makes sense because it allows compatibility between soft determinism and hard determinism

No, it allows compatibility between hard determinism and itself. Soft determinism is what arises as a result of that compatibility. Hence why soft determinism is called "compatibilism."

Given two options and two impulses, one for each, one would, by default, choose the one with the stronger impulse every time.

This is a vastly simplified version of reality, and it is often false. For example, people who beat their heroin addiction often have the stronger impulse of addiction (which is chemical, and probably stronger than any sort of will to beat the addiction) neglected in favor of the weaker impulse of their reasoning (addiction is bad).

I don't want to get too technical here, but here is a theory of how the mind works, dubbed C-R theory by, as far as I know, Chomsky (I believe it's called computational-representational theory). The basic idea is that a person is like a computer who judges herself to be in some situation, and considers a list of actions A1 to An and their consequences C1 to Cn. And for each consequence she predicts the probability of each, upon which a preference ordering is assigned. And then one of those consequences is chosen by a decision-theoretic function which choses an action based on those consequences are like. So for example, a drug addict may have the decision-theoretic function "short term pleasure" and choose the most pleasurable act in the short term. Or they may choose "long term pleasure" and choose the consequence of living for a long time instead of dying early from a drug overdose.

So what's involved in decision-making are decision-theoretic functions which select hypothesis on the basis of its observations and act on the basis of those hypothesis in a way in accordance with the decision-theoretic functions. The idea is that there are no "stronger impulses," only decision-theoretic functions and their consequences.

When you say 'can do otherwise', do you mean 'can choose another option' or 'can create a different outcome'? Because the first relates to the will, but the second does not.

I mean what I said earlier. Creating a different outcome would require some sort of magical ability. On the other hand, this does not:

if she did so act, the past would have been different. It merely indicates that a person who acted a certain way at a certain time possessed abilities to act in various sorts of ways. Had she exercised one of those abilities, and thereby acted differently, then the past leading up to her action would have been different. To illustrate how comparatively mild such a claim about an agent's ability and the past might be, think about a logically similar sort of claim that is simply about what would be required for an agent to act differently. For example, consider the claim, If I were dancing on the French Riviera right now, I'd be a lot richer than I am. Certainly this claim does not mean (at least not given my dancing skills) that if I go to the French Riviera to dance, I will thereby be made richer. It only means that were I to have gone there to tango, I would have to have had a lot more cash beforehand in order to finance my escapades.

The ability to do otherwise is just the ability to act in various sorts of ways in a certain way at a certain time.

[dondon151]

There's more than one definition of hatred, and I don't think there was anything in Jiodi's post that seemed to mention something as hatred that didn't fall into one of those definitions.

i'm sorry, but as annoyed as i get when we get into arguments about semantics, i can't deny that they're important. so either we can talk about the same thing, or we're talking past each other.

- I may have overstepped the debate itself, because I argue that even if that is the case, we have the capacity to control our emotions. We can even evolve ourselves emotionally and culturally given the right ingredients. You see families of murder victims fighting the death penalty of the murderer because of principal or because they have rejected hatred. You see soldiers on the east and west sides of the Great War putting down their arms and engineered propagandized hatred and playing soccer and exchanging Christmas gifts. You see certain types of people in certain types of faith cleansing themselves of negative emotions and truly experiencing the beauty that life has to offer.

none of these are examples of hatred being a choice.

1. families of murder victims fight the death penalty not because they don't feel hate, but because they think the death penalty is unethical. some would prefer that the murderer suffer for the rest of his life (which would not work if he were executed), which is nowhere near exemplary of eschewing hatred.

2. this instance of amicable wartime interaction between opposing factions is more indicative of the phenomenon of dehumanization than anything else. this sort of cognitive dissonance is allowed to exist in our minds.

3. if this process is contingent on belief, and belief is not a choice, then i'm not convinced in the least.

Dondon, it may be time to acknowledge that your debate topic died when it was first spoken. Whatever the dictionary may say, the concept people use is something deeper.

i wasn't intending to debate in the first place. i wanted to divest others of this misconception. (but i also could have been wrong, in which case i would have been interested in debate.)

on self-reflection: it's not immediately obvious to me that self-reflection necessarily leads to the alleviation of emotions such as love and hate.

Edited April 9, 2014 by dondon151

[Phoenix Wright]

This is a vastly simplified version of reality, and it is often false. For example, people who beat their heroin addiction often have the stronger impulse of addiction (which is chemical, and probably stronger than any sort of will to beat the addiction) neglected in favor of the weaker impulse of their reasoning (addiction is bad).

I don't want to get too technical here, but here is a theory of how the mind works, dubbed C-R theory by, as far as I know, Chomsky (I believe it's called computational-representational theory). The basic idea is that a person is like a computer who judges herself to be in some situation, and considers a list of actions A1 to An and their consequences C1 to Cn. And for each consequence she predicts the probability of each, upon which a preference ordering is assigned. And then one of those consequences is chosen by a decision-theoretic function which choses an action based on those consequences are like. So for example, a drug addict may have the decision-theoretic function "short term pleasure" and choose the most pleasurable act in the short term. Or they may choose "long term pleasure" and choose the consequence of living for a long time instead of dying early from a drug overdose.

So what's involved in decision-making are decision-theoretic functions which select hypothesis on the basis of its observations and act on the basis of those hypothesis in a way in accordance with the decision-theoretic functions. The idea is that there are no "stronger impulses," only decision-theoretic functions and their consequences.

more information on this, please?

[Chiki]

more information on this, please?

See Contemporary Philosophy of Mind by Georges Rey. It's a book.

[jiodi]

There's two issues with this. This is scientifically false. Animals seem to be able to hate and love things without having the ability to reflect on things. You kinda need language to be able to think carefully about things in the first place; you need language to be able to reason well. The article below illustrates that even animals can fall in love.

Secondly, this is also just obviously false. Reflecting means to think carefully about something. You don't need to think carefully about something to hate/love it; for example, have you ever heard "love at first sight?" Love is not caused by self-reflection. It's just an automatic reaction we have towards something without reflection. See this article for more details. http://www.economist.com/node/2424049

This is fantastic, thank you. I take back the mean stuff I said, now (whether you care or not).

It's weird to to me that I always seem to argue with cynics about stuff like your first point. If I go with my idea here and say that love and hate are subjective inferences of raw emotional feelings there is nothing scientifically false about it, barring "love" and "hate" becoming scientific terms. I believe that all of these abstract emotions stem from chemical reactions in the brain. These are not controllable. But just because we see it in animals doesn't mean we aren't processing it ourselves after the fact that it is felt, it just means we are applying the same abstract notions to the animals themselves. But this is definitely not something I am equipped to counter without speculation based on conjecture, so this point will stand.

But on the second point, to reflect on something may have the definition of "careful introspection" or whatever but, much like any good abstracted out enough programming language, our higher level brain functions are abstractions of our lower level ones. We have gotten so good at reflecting on emotions we consider it second nature at this point (for the most part). In C#, for instance, a generic list (List<T>) is simply a Vector under the hood. The vector still does its thing but the language is so powerful that it doesn't need to care up front that there is a Vector underneath.

Maybe I've lived in code too long that I've lost touch with reality >.<

1. families of murder victims fight the death penalty not because they don't feel hate, but because they think the death penalty is unethical. some would prefer that the murderer suffer for the rest of his life (which would not work if he were executed), which is nowhere near exemplary of eschewing hatred.

Sure, some, maybe even most. But this completely ignores the fact that there are quite possibly those that have chosen not to hate.

2. this instance of amicable wartime interaction between opposing factions is more indicative of the phenomenon of dehumanization than anything else. this sort of cognitive dissonance is allowed to exist in our minds.

Sure, I'll give you this one. But it does speak to the power of the human brain to control emotions, no?

3. if this process is contingent on belief, and belief is not a choice, then i'm not convinced in the least.

This process does not necessarily need to be contingent on belief. You can reach self-actualization from agnostic or atheist means. I have spent my life trying to clear my head of obsolete emotions such as hate. While I am not perfect at it, and have never been truly tested, right now I'm pretty happy with everything, though I still use the term "hate" superfluously.

i wasn't intending to debate in the first place. i wanted to divest others of this misconception. (but i also could have been wrong, in which case i would have been interested in debate.)

D'awe, you know you love debates!

Ultimately, though, I think I am down with your side of the argument. Most of what I have to say is pretty idealistic and banking on my optimistic view of our species being true. I feel like if we truly cannot control hatred or make it obsolete like I think we can, we cannot upgrade as a civilization and traverse the stars. I really want a societal velvet revolution. Or the singularity.

[RandomX2]

Having skimmed the thread, my opinions best matched those of Baldrick. Definitions are absolutely necessary for a question like this. Who are we talking about? Depending on that, the answer changes. Specifically, how was the person raised, and is their anything up with their genetics? Did they inherit a predisposition for calm behaviour, or intelligence?

A simplification of my opinion is this: hatred encompasses both instinctual hatred (i.e. an immediate response to a bad event, or spontaneous rage because your brain arbitrarily decided to release whatever combination of hormones that corresponds to rage) and non-immediate hatred. Since instincts are too hard to control, I'd vote that instinctual hatred is not a choice. You can train yourself to have a controlled personality, and to not have hatred as a default response to events. That's not something people do often, though, so I'd call that an exception and say that instinctual hatred is largely not a choice. That's because it happens automatically, without you being able to think about it and decide if it's what you want.

Continuing to hate someone may or may not be a choice. Let's say person "A" is wronged by person "B", and feels a rush of hatred. If "A" grew up in an poor environment that didn't encourage open-mindedness and friendliness and thinking, or if they drew a bad genetic lottery when it comes to their brain, it wouldn't occur to them that they could stop hating "B". They would continue to hate "B". For such a person, that hatred isn't a choice. In my mind, this "A" can't be responsible for their own thoughts. If instead "A" has a standard free human mind and is capable of thinking about whether or not they want to continue hating someone, then that hatred becomes a choice, just like most of their other decisions are choices. You can choose not to get angry at anything at all, no matter how seriously you're wronged. You can choose to continue hating someone, and that's okay, too. So long as you're aware that the other option exists, I'm more inclined to call it a choice.

I feel the question is a bit broad. tl;dr: Some hatred is a choice, and some isn't, depending on the people involved and if you'd actually call their emotions at the time "hatred."

[Makaze]

I cannot believe I caught dragged into this... I guess it was inevitable with Chiki here...

It's actually not my scenario. It's very famous, and I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwCompatFrankfurt.htm for more details.

The scenario I was referring to was the one you gave in the quote given below.

Maybe you're getting this wrong because English may not be your native language, but I'm pretty sure "choose to kill" means exactly the same thing as "choose to attempt to kill. " People use the two interchangeably all the time. Just because you say you "chose to kill" someone doesn't mean it's foolish to expect things from the environment. You can choose to kill someone regardless of the possibilities of failing. They just mean the same thing, and there's no contradiction involved. Intuitively, we choose to kill someone, and the consequences of that choice may result in failure or not. That has no bearing on what the choice actually is.

That is why I was confused. You see, I found a disparity between that meaning for choice and this quote:

Here's an argument in favor of your view. Imagine Jones was about to kill a man named Black. Smith put a mind-controlling chip inside Jones's head, which makes it so that Jones will always kill Black no matter what, even if he decides not to kill Black. Let's say Jones decided to kill Black. Does Jones have free will, even though he can't do otherwise? Maybe.

By this definition of choice, it is impossible for Jones to make a choice in the first place. Jones can have no will of his own. Mind control creates hard determinism for the subject even if the universe itself is soft. He may think he makes a choice, but it has no meaning because he, personally, did not actuate it.

I'm not using hate in any other sense. I'm just using dondon's definition "feeling of intense dislike." You don't need any other sense of hatred other than his.

To see how this is possible, there's this phenomenon in psychology called "habituation." You get habituated to stimuli the more often you are exposed to it. Hence, you stop feeling intense dislike as you see it more and more often because you get so used to it.

I suspect this is what is involved in ending the feeling of intense dislike upon seeing some stimuli. There's no long-term sense of "hatred" here; it's just irrelevant.

Dondon's definition has been dead since the start of the thread. We agree that when one gets the initial feeling, they are not able to not feel however they happen to feel in reaction. We do not agree on mine. If you wish to discuss his, you will have to find someone else to do it with.

Interestingly, habituation has been proven to give inconclusive results with anger, in particular. Many if not most individuals find themselves more enraged and convicted the more think about their dislike. While the action may inspire less instance-specific rage each time, the hatred grows with each time.

Hence I intentionally differentiate it from rage, which is also a feeling of intense dislike. Rage might succumb to habituation, but hatred lives on beyond individual stimuli. Rage is a present sensation while hatred is in the head. Is this not making sense to you?

This is a vastly simplified version of reality, and it is often false. For example, people who beat their heroin addiction often have the stronger impulse of addiction (which is chemical, and probably stronger than any sort of will to beat the addiction) neglected in favor of the weaker impulse of their reasoning (addiction is bad).

I don't want to get too technical here, but here is a theory of how the mind works, dubbed C-R theory by, as far as I know, Chomsky (I believe it's called computational-representational theory). The basic idea is that a person is like a computer who judges herself to be in some situation, and considers a list of actions A1 to An and their consequences C1 to Cn. And for each consequence she predicts the probability of each, upon which a preference ordering is assigned. And then one of those consequences is chosen by a decision-theoretic function which choses an action based on those consequences are like. So for example, a drug addict may have the decision-theoretic function "short term pleasure" and choose the most pleasurable act in the short term. Or they may choose "long term pleasure" and choose the consequence of living for a long time instead of dying early from a drug overdose.

So what's involved in decision-making are decision-theoretic functions which select hypothesis on the basis of its observations and act on the basis of those hypothesis in a way in accordance with the decision-theoretic functions. The idea is that there are no "stronger impulses," only decision-theoretic functions and their consequences.

Addressing this here since it relates to what follows.

I agree with that model. It seems to make sense.

Does it contradict my simplification to impulses? No.

In order for this computer to create the preference order, it has to have some criteria by which to sort. Where do these criteria come from? They are not specified in the model itself. They must be outside of it; outside of the process; innate to the mind.

While I may have simplified things, the result is the same.

There is a question that needs asking about impulses. You assumed that a heroin addict's impulse to use was strongest. How do you determine the strength of an impulse?

I am not using impulse in the physical sense, but rather in a metaphysical sense. As I see it, whichever impulse wins out was the stronger.

For example, people who beat their heroin addiction often have a stronger drive to use than to get clean. Those are the ones who do not get clean.

The ones who get clean had a stronger impulse to reason. That is doubly true for heroin addicts because the impulse to use is so strong that is can cloud and warp reason. If it were any other way, their computer-model minds would have created a preference order that favored using and they would not have gotten clean.

Unless you have another way to determine preference order?

See Harry Frankfurt's case that I showed you above. The idea of that case is that one has the ability to reflect without having the ability to do otherwise. It's true that generally, doing otherwise is the consequent of the ability of reflection. But they are not necessarily seen in conjunction. This is what I meant when I said they have nothing to do with each other. You can reflect without doing otherwise, and you can do otherwise without reflecting.

No, it allows compatibility between hard determinism and itself. Soft determinism is what arises as a result of that compatibility. Hence why soft determinism is called "compatibilism."

I mean what I said earlier. Creating a different outcome would require some sort of magical ability. On the other hand, this does not:

The ability to do otherwise is just the ability to act in various sorts of ways in a certain way at a certain time.

I have come to the conclusion that you cannot do otherwise without reflecting. I will explain below.

As I have understood it, soft determinism is differentiated from hard determinism in that it asserts that some decisions are not determined by factors outside the subject's control, while others are. In other words, under soft determinism, there are some actions taken by people that are considered determined, and yet other actions by those same people that are considered free.

Given Person A and a set of impulses, Person A's decision would be said to have been determined if they would make the same choice in the same scenario every time.

Most often, these are scenarios where they are thrust into a situation without a chance to consider any other option then their strongest impulse. For example, if Person A has not been presented with other options, they will choose the only option they see as available to them, every time.

Person A's decision would also be said to have been determined if their choice was influenced by a particularly strong stimulus. For example, Person A may fly into a fit of rage and their actions will become exceedingly predictable as a result.

Person A's decision be said to have been free if they would not make the same choice in the same scenario every time.

Personally, I would not call their decision a choice unless it were free, as in the last option, because that is the only scenario where the end result (supposedly) has the subject's will as a deciding factor rather than the other way around.

Walk through a decision with those distinctions in mind.

Without reflection:

Assume:

Premise 1: Person A's only impulses are to experience pleasure and to stay healthy.

Premise 2: Person A has a concept of chocolate; they know that it is pleasurable, but also that it is unhealthy.

Premise 3: Person A's impulse to experience pleasure is stronger than their impulse to stay healthy.

Premise 4: Person A is incapable of reflecting on their decision before making it.

1: Person A is presented with a choice. To eat chocolate, or not to eat chocolate.

2: Seeking pleasure > staying healthy. Person A (or rather, Person A's body) eats the chocolate as a result of their impulse to seek pleasure.

Put into the same situation with the same factors, Person A would make the same choice every single time.

With reflection:

Assume:

Premises 1-3.

Premise 5: Person A is capable of reflecting on their decision before making it.

1: Person A is presented with a choice. To eat chocolate, or not to eat chocolate.

2: Person A reflects on their choice.

3: They decide to balance their impulses and eat only a morsel of chocolate; staying healthy will result in long-term pleasure. | OR | They decide to eat the chocolate; they really want it. | OR | They decide not to eat the chocolate; they must stay healthy.

Put into the same situation with the same factors, Person A would not make the same choice every single time. Or, that is the argument behind soft determinism, anyway.

I can see no way, even theoretically, for the person to deviate from their determined inclinations without the reflection and consideration. If they could make choices that contradict their innate preferences, then what would cause them to do so? Provided the environment remains the same, why would they behave differently in the same situation?

I'm getting at the point that if you would never deviate, then there is no reason to assert that you could deviate. The situation remains determined so long as you are a slave to impulse instead of conscious weighing.

An extension of this is that hard determinism and soft determinism are incompatible. Hard determinism dictates that all actions are determined. Soft determinism dictates that some actions are free. The only compatibility to be had between the two comes from the idea that in the subjective, conscious scope, one consciously considers the choices and thinks "I decide to do this", which requires reflection by definition.

on self-reflection: it's not immediately obvious to me that self-reflection necessarily leads to the alleviation of emotions such as love and hate.

It does not always lead to it, but it has the ability to. The idea is that if you reflect with the intention of alleviating those feelings, you can do so through that reflection.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Makaze

[Chiki]

I was originally going to give you a long reply. But then I saw the very basic mistakes you're making in your post--even though I corrected you in previous posts--and I think the only way you and I can have a proper debate is if you read up the material and understand where you're making these very basic mistakes.

Dondon's definition has been dead since the start of the thread.

Prove this. This is not how you debate. You don't just assume what's going on in people's heads and take it for granted you're right. Cite some evidence.

As I have understood it, soft determinism is differentiated from hard determinism in that it asserts that some decisions are not determined by factors outside the subject's control, while others are. In other words, under soft determinism, there are some actions taken by people that are considered determined, and yet other actions by those same people that are considered free.

This is flat out wrong. Soft determinism acknowledges that all decisions are determined--not some determined and some not. It only redefines free will. Think of it as a linguistic game. Here's a part on SEU about what you're getting wrong:

For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will

There is no middle ground. Either there is no deterministic universe, or there is. There is no middle ground. If all actions are not determined, by definition that's not determinism. Determinism is the thesis that all actions are predetermined. That's nonsense. I also highly suggest you read some stuff on causal determinism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/ Here is the part which defines determinism:

Causal determinism is, roughly speaking, the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.

The key word here is "every" event.

I have come to the conclusion that you cannot do otherwise without reflecting.

There are two obvious problems with your argument, but I won't go into detail because you need to learn a lot more before making any arguments.

1. You didn't define what "doing otherwise" is.

2. Going by the definition I gave previously, animals can do otherwise though they can't reflect. Elephants have various abilities to do things in the past, for example.

An extension of this is that hard determinism and soft determinism are incompatible. Hard determinism dictates that all actions are determined. Soft determinism dictates that some actions are free. The only compatibility to be had between the two comes from the idea that in the subjective, conscious scope, one consciously considers the choices and thinks "I decide to do this", which requires reflection by definition.

LOL. You are so confused, though I told you this before. Soft determinism is the compatibility as a result of accepting hard determinism and a sense of free will. Soft determinism and hard determinism are not what's compatible. Soft determinism is synonymous with "compatibilism." Soft determinism is just hard determinism with free will added in. :P You really need to learn what the hard deterministic thesis even is before making comments like this.

It's obvious you don't know the material very well at all, judging from the fact that you're making some very basic mistakes that freshmen philosophy majors would make. I highly suggest reading SEU's entry on free will. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

I won't comment further on this debate to avoid derailing dondon's thread.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Chiki

[jiodi]

I'm surprised no one has used "being gay is not a choice" as an argument, so far. Being gay boils down to basic emotional responses and you can only choose whether or not to act on those emotions.

The points I gave before would be an argument for homosexuality being a choice, which would annoy a lot of my gay friends. Then again, it shouldn't matter if it's a choice or a gene or your blue jeans or drugs that make you gay, there's no reason to treat it with contempt.

[Chiki]

Homosexuality is more of a lifestyle than an emotion. Hatred is presumably not.

[Rehab]

What do you mean by that?

[Chiki]

It's a lifestyle to sleep and marry the same gender. Presumably people don't marry and sleep with their hatred. I don't think homosexuality is a choice either: see gay penguins.

[Rehab]

I've most often heard "homosexuality is a lifestyle" paired with the latter sentiment, as in accusing them of doing something sinful which is under their control yadda yadda, but if that's all you mean, and would in turn say heterosexuality is also a lifestyle, I guess I don't have a big problem with that.

Most definitions (eugh) I've heard of the term "sexuality" refer to it as a combination of "simple" preference (as in "sexual preference") and hormones, though, which emotion is of course wrapped up in. So, a closeted person (or an out person who's for whatever reason married to the opposite sex) (it can happen, I swear) who's sexually attracted to their sex would be thought of as homosexual/gay, by that meaning. But I guess I can't say it matters enough for me to want to pick an argument about it.

(and yes I've heard of gay animals. so many gay animals)

Edited April 10, 2014 by Rehab

[Rapier]

so the question at hand: is hatred really a choice?

no it's not. i can no more choose to like something that i hate than i can choose to believe in something that i don't think exists.

Your conception can change depending on your experiences. It is possible for you to end up ceasing your hate toward something after several years pass and your thoughtline changes, which almost certainly does (unless someone is hermetic, which I don't think is the case here).

I think hatred is a choice because it is subjective to your way of thinking. You have reasons to judge religious conservatives and motives to hate them, but it all depends on how you look at it. It is not religious conservatives that bring hate out of people, it's your way of thinking toward religious conservatives that makes them hateable for you; otherwise there wouldn't be people who like them.

[dondon151]

Your conception can change depending on your experiences. It is possible for you to end up ceasing your hate toward something after several years pass and your thoughtline changes, which almost certainly does (unless someone is hermetic, which I don't think is the case here).

no, but i don't have a choice with respect to that, either. if i have been conditioned or brought up to think in a certain way, which in turn influences how i perceive certain people, then i can't immediately change the way i think!

[Rapier]

no, but i don't have a choice with respect to that, either. if i have been conditioned or brought up to think in a certain way, which in turn influences how i perceive certain people, then i can't immediately change the way i think!

It's not whether it is possible to change immediately that is brought here. It is the fact that it can change, and most people develop/change their ways of thinking throughout their lives.

You can change the way you think about these conservatives, but you've no reason to do so since your beliefs are diametrically opposed. IF in the future your opinion about them changes, you can opt to stop hating them and start liking them.

You can choose to hate or not, but the thing is, you don't have a reason to like something you don't agree with or hate something you agree with. Once your views change, then you can also choose your position regarding the matter.

This would imply that our hatred is compulsory untl a certain step is reached, which means... Uh, the middle-term?

[Primrose]

Ladies and Gentlemen,



I believe hatred is anger with motivation. Undoubtedly, as members of the human race, we have the unique ability to consciously control anger and I believe anger itself is unique to human beings. Animals, like dogs, can not feel angry, they simply rely on instinct and react aggressively when aggravated. If it is agreed upon that we can control anger, hatred then inevitably becomes a choice.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Primrose

[dondon151]

you can't control anger. if you mean to suggest that it's possible to never feel the emotion of anger over anything so long as you will it hard enough, then you're most definitely wrong on that part. i'm going to pre-empt another dumb semantic argument on what "anger" actually means. look it up. if what you really mean by the word "anger" is the action of taking that anger out on someone or something, then no, that's not "anger."

the reason why i'm such a stickler on correcting these misconceptions is because these sorts of opinions affect the way that people judge others. it's easy to blame others for their shortcomings because you think that they lack the willpower to suppress emotions and urges that are innate to human biology.

It's not whether it is possible to change immediately that is brought here. It is the fact that it can change, and most people develop/change their ways of thinking throughout their lives.

You can change the way you think about these conservatives, but you've no reason to do so since your beliefs are diametrically opposed. IF in the future your opinion about them changes, you can opt to stop hating them and start liking them.

this does nothing more than furthering my point. it is not any more possible to choose to like someone whom you hate than it is to choose to hate someone whom you like.

Edited April 13, 2014 by dondon151

[Rapier]

this does nothing more than furthering my point. it is not any more possible to choose to like someone whom you hate than it is to choose to hate someone whom you like.

You can choose, but you have no reason to like something you don't agree with or hate something you agree with. Once you have a reason to think otherwise, then another option becomes plausible and your opportunity to choose again arises. It is then that you have an option.

I'd say hatred is a choice that we compulsorily take because our reason/thinking says so. The option to keep hating/liking or switch only arises when our reasoning/thinking changes.

[Chiki]

You can choose, but you have no reason to like something you don't agree with or hate something you agree with. Once you have a reason to think otherwise, then another option becomes plausible and your opportunity to choose again arises. It is then that you have an option.

I'd say hatred is a choice that we compulsorily take because our reason/thinking says so. The option to keep hating/liking or switch only arises when our reasoning/thinking changes.

Coming back to free will huh?

Reason has nothing to do with feeling emotions. I can't think myself into not hating Republicans.

[Snowy_One]

Hatred is not a choice. I hate myself. I am many things apparently. Monster, ignorant, lazy, thick-headed, brutish, racist, republican, sexist, pig with no hope or chance, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. How could I not hate myself?

[BBM]

@Chiki/Dondon- Have you never changed your feelings about someone? Began disliking them and then liked them after a while, or vice versa?

[Chiki]

@Chiki/Dondon- Have you never changed your feelings about someone? Began disliking them and then liked them after a while, or vice versa?

Your change in opinion is often accompanied by an involuntary change in emotion.

[BBM]

But not always. Anyways, I was thinking more about the topic while I was taking a shower and I realized that that question is not really relevant at all, although your answer was more or less what I was expecting.

I believe that beginning to hate (or love) someone is a choice, in most scenarios. Do I believe that it's possible to avoid impulsive knee-jerk reaction emotions? No, you're pretty much stuck with those. But those emotions aren't hatred. As Chiki and Dondon keep saying, hate is an intense feeling of dislike. Classifying an initial gut reaction to someone pissing you off as hatred cheapens what it signifies, in my opinion. There is a moment, I believe, except for maybe the most extreme scenarios (I have never experienced anything extreme like the death of a loved one, so I will refrain from including that in my generalization) where you consciously choose to decide that this person or thing is just terrible. It's like love at first sight. People talk about it but I have yet to ever see a convincing argument that an emotion that is as strong as love can appear without any reason or subconscious thinking at all.

Once strong emotions do appear, I agree that it's very difficult to change them. But in letting it get to that point you've already made a choice, in my opinion.

[Chiki]

It's not really a choice if you no longer have control over it.

Here is an example. Drug addicts may indeed have a choice when they first start taking drugs. But later on, they get addicted and lose that choice-making ability. Just because it was a choice a first doesn't mean it's a choice later on.