Tom's "The Commitments of Naturalism - A Dialog" is interesting, but I noted something in Gabriel Mihalache's opening questions that was not addressed by...
Yes, the dialog didn't get to everything Gabriel asked about, including the question of how we justify ought statements (that is, values) if we don't have...
Tom, You know I am moved to ask what I am about to ask. When you wrote, "Another good reason to be thankful we aren't little gods", just what did you mean? ...
I meant that we don't have contra-causal free will. To think we might have such free will would set us up as causally privileged over the rest of nature, just...
Tom, Yeah, that's what I thought was meant. But for the very same reasons that man's "free" will is an impossibility, it is impossible for any "god" to have...
Gods, Choice Steve: You make a good point that we somehow assume that the very idea of a god with free will is a coherent concept. I think free will is like a...
Ken, Choice behavior is, indeed, a fully-determined cognitive process. I wouldn't call it a "subroutine" because that implies it is somehow linked or even...
Sonny, I don't understand what you are trying to say when you say, "all determinants, which are innumerable, must be identical, an impractical, nay, impossible...
Sonny: The precise nature of choice behavior may be of some interest, I'm not denying that. I don't think it affects our basic ideas, after all no one here...
Steve: I agree that CNHDO is vital to an understanding of what we're talking about. One "little" place where the "could not have done otherwise" condition is...
Yes, nice point Ken. The whole notion of explanation at the macro level is tied to the idea of lawful causation in which the same conditions would produce the...
We all have an ethical obligation, I would argue, to be empiricists when our beliefs have implications and consequences for this world, which of course is most...
Very plausible. My ideal is to seek and express the truth as I see it, even when it's difficult. We are like the child in the story of the emperor's new...
... solely on evidence." Yes, this sums it up, and the reason it's the best way is that evidence-based beliefs are the most reliable in tracking the world, and...
... Trying to be as reliable as we can seems to me ethical behavior, even by traditional standards. Let's see, reliability, causality, compassion, control....
Science magazine, Volume 309, September 23, 2005, page 2010-2013, contained a Review I heartily recommend to all, titled, "Noise in Gene Expression: Origins,...
Nothing about the existence of "noise" is a challenge to hard determinism. "Noise" is as determined as "signal". The search for randomness is irrelevant to...
Agreed - what this research challenges is what is known as "biological determinism" and not hard determinism. For the latter, the noise is just one of the...
Ken, The critical and positive ingredient in denouncing free will is to understand causation. Neither determinism nor naturalism should be restricted to such...
Here's some data on what college kids actually think about free will, etc. in the context of challenging Israali philosopher Saul Smilansky's empirical...
Hi there. My name is Tom McWilliams, and I've come to your group for a rather specific purpose. I read earlier on this forum a taxonomy of belief, and I am an...
Tom, You've got it all wrong. What you have here are three straw dogs. Sorry. Seems as if you are trying to assert the man's will is free. I get the impression...
Actually, most of us here don't defend determinism as necessarily the case, although it's a plausible working assumption at the macro level when trying to...
... IMO the difficulty is not philosophical, it's psychological. People are taught from day one to blame and be blamed for their actions. Blame and retribution...
... Sorry. Then you should have no trouble explaining *how* I've 'gotten it wrong.' ... It does seem as if the two possibilities are mutually exclusive, which...
When I posted the link for Joshua Knobe's and Brian Leiter's paper: "The Case for Nietzsche's Moral Philosphy"; I used the BETA version which doesn't display...
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