On Aug 30, 5:31 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 8/30/2011 9:41 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > If you deem all phenomena in the > > universe to be a priori mechanistic, then that word has no meaning. If > > you want it to mean something then you have to allow that some > > phenomena are not mechanistic. In that case, if you had to say that > > something in the cosmos was not mechanical, what might that something > > be if not human feeling, imagination, creativity and free will? > > A muddle of meaning and value, words and events. Words have meaning, they > refer to other > things. The word mechanistic describes certain philosophies or models of the > world; > namely those in which there is no libertarian free-will. The word is > meaningful if you > have theories of the world that do include libertarian free-will; whether > those worlds > exist or not.
How could even a fantasy of free-will occur in a universe that was purely mechanistic? If everything is mechanistic, then mechanistic can only be a synonym for universality and non-mechanistic becomes literally and permanently inconceivable. > A mechanistic world model can still accomodate human (and animal) feeling, > imagination, creativity and compatibilist free will. How, specifically? Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
