On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> A mechanistic world model can still accomodate human (and animal) feeling, >> >> imagination, creativity and compatibilist free will. >> >> > How, specifically? >> >> There is no onus on us to answer that question in order to show that >> it can happen, since it is in fact what happens. > > You assert a completely fallacious claim that "A mechanistic world > model can still accomodate human (and animal) feeling, imagination, > creativity and compatibilist free will." and then decline to answer on > behalf of 'us' on the grounds that you say 'it is what happens'? > > So I can say that a universe made of strawberry jam can still > accommodate heavy industry and supercolliders, and you will ask me > how, and then I can respond that "There is no onus on 'us' to answer > that question in order to show that it can happen, since it is in fact > what happens'. You claim that consciousness is a separate, non-physical thing that can act on matter but there is absolutely no evidence for that. What we are left with, then, is a mechanistic world. Since consciousness occurs in this world, consciousness is consistent with a mechanistic world. > What you are saying, in no uncertain terms, is "There is no reason for > me ('us') to justify my ('our') reasoning, since I am right." > > You could have instead just said "oh, I guess you might be right. A > mechanistic worldview probably does fail to account for feeling, > creativity, or imagination'. It's a fact that feeling occurs in a mechanistic world. The explanation for it may be elusive, the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, but that does not change the brute fact that it happens. >> It's like asking how >> heavier than air flight is possible: birds are heavier than air, birds >> fly, therefore heavier than air flight is possible. > > Yeah, no, it isn't. You are stating clearly that the entire cosmos is > either mechanistically determined by particle physics or random. I'm > saying that view does not account for things that obviously do not > fall into either category, like enthusiasm, beauty, meaning, logic, > imagination, novelty, science, design, technology, life, pain, > struggle, choices, etc. My point is that we can observe that something occurs and conclude that therefore it is possible, even without being able to explain how it occurs or how to replicate it. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.