“Why bother with effort and hardship if, at the end of the day, I will always do the one and only thing I was predetermined to do anyway?”
I think this is kind of muddled thinking. You will either bother with the effort and hardship or you will not bother and will loose out on the potential rewards of that effort. Before you ever heard of determinism how did you deal with this situation? I assume you assessed the potential rewards, risks and how much effort the action would cost, and then decided if you thought it was worth it or not.
Now that you think the world is deterministic, I don’t see what changes. You still have to make a choice about how much effort to exert, or hardship to endure, in pursuit of any given goal. Yes, in a deterministic universe the eventual outcome is predetermined, but for most things you are considering it is predetermined not in spite of your choices, but because of them.
Lets say you were thinking of writing a book, and lets say that if you wrote this book, it could be successful. There are three possible worlds, we don’t know which we live in:
1. Writes book > it is successful. 2. Writes book > not successful. 3. Does not write book.
When we compare 1 and 2, it just says that any risky endeavour can go wrong for reasons beyond our own control. Whether we are at the mercy of chance, or determinism, doesn’t change this situation in the slightest. In either case we would have to try and guess at the chances of outcome 1 and 2 and proceed according to the chance we deem acceptable.
Now, compare 1 and 3. This is (I think) where you issue is. You feel like determinism somehow has you trapped in timeline 3, when you want to be in timeline 1. You want to motivate yourself to do things (in this example, to write) to move yourself from timeline 3 to 1. But, when you try and summon up the motivation you feel like the book or whatever will be doomed to not being successful, because of this determinism. But, that is not at all how it works. Lets say that the book would be successful if it were written, then the existence (or not) of a successful book is causally “downstream” of your choice to write it or not. In graph form
Determinism > Your Decision > Success.
In this example, your decision “screens off”, determinism. In the domino-chain of cause and effect your choice about whether to do something or not is a vital point, perhaps the only vital point, in the success of your plans.
To put it in another way, look at a counterfactual like “if X was different, Y would be different”. Counterfactuals can still be true in a deterministic world. (In fact, determinism probably helps counterfactuals be true). Counterfactuals are the core of cause and effect. We can 100% believe that if you try you will succeed, while simultaneously believing that whether or not you try follows from a deterministic decision making process.
If none of this helps, I would weirdly advocate looking at the Christian idea of the “Elect of God”. This is the idea that God has already predestined the entirety of history, including the good and bad deeds of all individual humans, and hence whether those humans will go to heaven or not. The “Elect of God” are the people god has predestined for good deeds, and therefore for heaven.
Note again, the causal structure is: [predestination > good deeds > heaven], and not [predestination > heaven] with [good deeds] irrelevant. If you take out the good deeds the sequence no longer works. Just like if you had [Gun fires > bullet flies > bird dies] it is true to say the gun shot killed the bird, but it is also true to say that without the bullet the gunshot would not have killed the bird. As I understand it your case is [Atoms and stuff jumbling through space > my brain makes a decision > an outcome occurs], which has the same structure. Maybe the ultimate cause was the atom jumble, but it had to go through you, and it remains counter-factually true that if you had made a different decision a different outcome would have followed.
“Why bother with effort and hardship if, at the end of the day, I will always do the one and only thing I was predetermined to do anyway?”
I think this is kind of muddled thinking. You will either bother with the effort and hardship or you will not bother and will loose out on the potential rewards of that effort. Before you ever heard of determinism how did you deal with this situation? I assume you assessed the potential rewards, risks and how much effort the action would cost, and then decided if you thought it was worth it or not.
Now that you think the world is deterministic, I don’t see what changes. You still have to make a choice about how much effort to exert, or hardship to endure, in pursuit of any given goal. Yes, in a deterministic universe the eventual outcome is predetermined, but for most things you are considering it is predetermined not in spite of your choices, but because of them.
Lets say you were thinking of writing a book, and lets say that if you wrote this book, it could be successful. There are three possible worlds, we don’t know which we live in:
1. Writes book > it is successful.
2. Writes book > not successful.
3. Does not write book.
When we compare 1 and 2, it just says that any risky endeavour can go wrong for reasons beyond our own control. Whether we are at the mercy of chance, or determinism, doesn’t change this situation in the slightest. In either case we would have to try and guess at the chances of outcome 1 and 2 and proceed according to the chance we deem acceptable.
Now, compare 1 and 3. This is (I think) where you issue is. You feel like determinism somehow has you trapped in timeline 3, when you want to be in timeline 1. You want to motivate yourself to do things (in this example, to write) to move yourself from timeline 3 to 1. But, when you try and summon up the motivation you feel like the book or whatever will be doomed to not being successful, because of this determinism. But, that is not at all how it works. Lets say that the book would be successful if it were written, then the existence (or not) of a successful book is causally “downstream” of your choice to write it or not. In graph form
Determinism > Your Decision > Success.
In this example, your decision “screens off”, determinism. In the domino-chain of cause and effect your choice about whether to do something or not is a vital point, perhaps the only vital point, in the success of your plans.
To put it in another way, look at a counterfactual like “if X was different, Y would be different”. Counterfactuals can still be true in a deterministic world. (In fact, determinism probably helps counterfactuals be true). Counterfactuals are the core of cause and effect. We can 100% believe that if you try you will succeed, while simultaneously believing that whether or not you try follows from a deterministic decision making process.
If none of this helps, I would weirdly advocate looking at the Christian idea of the “Elect of God”. This is the idea that God has already predestined the entirety of history, including the good and bad deeds of all individual humans, and hence whether those humans will go to heaven or not. The “Elect of God” are the people god has predestined for good deeds, and therefore for heaven.
Note again, the causal structure is: [predestination > good deeds > heaven], and not [predestination > heaven] with [good deeds] irrelevant. If you take out the good deeds the sequence no longer works. Just like if you had [Gun fires > bullet flies > bird dies] it is true to say the gun shot killed the bird, but it is also true to say that without the bullet the gunshot would not have killed the bird. As I understand it your case is [Atoms and stuff jumbling through space > my brain makes a decision > an outcome occurs], which has the same structure. Maybe the ultimate cause was the atom jumble, but it had to go through you, and it remains counter-factually true that if you had made a different decision a different outcome would have followed.