Great, I'm pleased to meet a like-minded person here in the forum
Well, it's complicated to discuss such a topic here in a forum like this. But what I was getting at is not a strictly deterministic position. Rather, I wanted to implicitly refer to compatibilism, according to which determinism and freedom are compatible: we are indeed influenced by external and internal factors in decision-making processes, but we act on the basis of reasons that we choose ourselves, and we would act differently if we had other reasons for action with which we can identify. Freedom is shown here in the fact that
we build reasons for action. We act this way (and not otherwise) because we have reasons for doing so that we have chosen ourselves. But again, these reasons for action do not emerge out of nowhere, rather they are the result of influences from various factors that are external nature (social normativity, education, obligations, etc.) and internal nature (character, personality, inclinations, etc.). All the decisions we make (freedom) are mediated by the Other (determinism). Spontaneous example: when we drive a car, we do so on a predetermined road by following fixed rules with the desire to reach the destination etc; of course, countless determinant factors could be formulated, but the point is that we make a rational decision to drive. And this is at least not just a question of “what” we do, but also of “how” we do it: this is an aspect of our freedom.
In my provocation about the children and TikTok (
@drftr), I wanted to point out precisely this aspect: TikTok and other social media influence children in such a way that they provide them with reasons to act in exactly the way that is expected. Especially as children, generally speaking of course, do not have the necessary critical faculty or critical impulses to question such reasons for action, they know or do not want to accept other reasons. This is not surprising if, as statistics from the USA have shown in the time of Corona, they spend an average of 40+ hours a week (!) on their cell phones on social media, which show targeted content based on specific algorithms.
Of course, this is just one approach. It is certainly not the last word, but at the moment this view is being advocated in philosophy. And nobody is claiming that it is an objective truth. This is also a question of one's own perspective. It is no coincidence that such debates have been going on for 2,000 years and are constantly being reopened.
