On Feb 8, 11:01 am, 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Feb 8, 2:07 pm, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > It depends if you consider biology metaphysical. Free will is a > > > > > > capacity which we associate with living organisms, > > > > > > rightly or wrongly > > > > > There may not be a rightly or wrongly. > > > > Neither rightly nor wrongly? > > > Yes. There may not be an absolute correlation between living organisms > > and free will so much as a relative expectation of free will in things > > which are similar to the (any) observer. > > And if there is zero FW, those relative expectations > will be wrong too.
If they are relative there is no wrong. If I am very cold and I walk into a room temperature room, to me the room feels warm. That isn't right or wrong, it's a reflection of how my sense of temperature works. My sense of free will may work the same way. If I am used to a busy social human world, being out in nature may seem to be nothing but randomness and determinism, but if I grew up in the wilderness, that may not be the case. The wilderness becomes a living context which can be read and perhaps dialogued with in some direct way. > > > > > > > > > > >My hunch is that there > > probably is a correlation between what we think of as having free will > > and it's actual capacity for it, but who knows, we don't seem to be a > > very good judge of that kind of thing. > > > > > Free will, as an aspect of > > > > consciousness, may be subjective. > > > > The degree to which we infer the > > > > other as having the capacity for free will may be directly > > > > proportional to the perception of similarity to oneself. > > > > That doesn;t affect my point. if we are mistaken > > > in attributing FW to ourselves ITFP, we will be mistaken > > > in attributing to others on the basis of similarity to ourselves. > > > It think the possibility of falsely attributing FW to ourselves ITFP > > fails since it entails making a distinction between FW and > > determinism, which would not be conceivable without FW ITFP. > > It's conceivable. I just conceived it. I just conceived it = "I, of my own free will, chose to conceive of it" > > > It would > > be like trying to make a distinction between air and the shadow of an > > invisible palm tree. > > ??????? I'm saying that in a hypothetical universe where no freewill existed, there would be no way to even conceive of an alternative to determinism. You couldn't get outside of determinism to even imagine that there could be any other theoretical possibility. It would be to imagine the opposite of something that cannot even be named. If there were no such thing as color, you could not imagine color simply by trying to conceive of 'not black and white'. Without free will in the first place, there is no possibility of conceiving anything or wondering about anything. The entire universe would be a machine that 'simply is' with no possibility for awareness (what would be the point of awareness?) > > > The whole idea of having an opinion of whether or > > not we have FW rests on our capacity to have and change an opinion, > > which would be meaningless under determinism. > > No it wouldn't. Of course you can;t freelly change an opinion > without some sort of freedom. Why? If you have some sort of freedom, then you don't have determinism. > But that is question begging. No, it's question answering. You have a question? Then you have free will, otherwise there would be no point at all in the possibility of any sort of question. There would only be known and unknown, with no significant difference between them (again, what would be the point? if you can't do anything about your question except be a helpless spectator to see whether it gets answered or not, what would be the point?) > But the other forms of the argument are non sequiturs. What the palm tree? I was trying to explain precisely that determinism and free will would both be non-sequiturs in a deterministic universe. It would be a name for darkness in a universe without light. No distinction = no sense. > 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.
