On Feb 9, 4:43 pm, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 1Z <peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > It [being free] means your actions are not determined by external forces > > So a external force like light that has reflected off a wall does not > effect your actions and you crash into the wall. If that's what being free > means then I don't want to be free.
You substituted "effect" for "determine". > > What is my defintion, IYO? > > You're asking me??! You want me to tell you what you're talking about? You wrote as if you knew. > > I don't believe I've offered one in the current discussion. > > As you've been arguing passionately that free will exist and even claim to > have proven No and no. > >it I think its odd that now you refuse to even say what the > hell it is. Are you asking? I thought you knew. > Before you can prove something you must know what the hell > you're trying to prove. First tell me what "free will" means and only then > we can debate if human beings have this property or not. Free Will is defined as "the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances". > > Meaning it was caused or uncased. > > Meaning it was deterministic or random. > > > an uncaused aim or goal still counts as a reason, > > Yes certainly, in that case you did X because of goal Y and so X was > deterministic. But what caused goal Y? Nothing caused goal Y, it was > random. And you did X to achieve goal Y, so X had a reason, even if Y didn't have a cause. > > because it is an answer to the question "what did you do that for". > > However, only a very select group of entities can answer such questions. > > But human beings don't seem to be members of that "very select group" > because very soon after you start firing off a chain of "what did you do > that for" questions at them all they can do is come up with a standard > rubber stamp reply of "I don't know, I just wanted to". FW only requires people to be as rational as people generally are , so that doens't matter. > >> and if the name is appropriate and it really is final > > > That's not what "final" means in context. > > Bullshit. Bullshit yourself, I intorduced the term and I know what I meant by it > > > Read yer Aristotle. > > Actually I have read Aristotle when I was young and foolish and it was a > complete waste of time. Unlike Plato his literary style was really bad, and > even by the standards of the day Aristotle was a dreadful physicist, just > awful, a good high school physics student today knows far more philosophy > than Aristotle did. Progress has been made in the last 2500 years. And I've > got to tell you that just dropping the name of a ancient Greek philosopher > doesn't impress me very much, especially when there is no evidence you know > a damn thing about him. I was establishing a meaning, not a claim. But there;s no reasoining with the unreasonable. > > > Nope. You have misunderstood "final cause". > > I'm curious, does anybody think that the above is a satisfactory rebuttal > to my argument, or to any argument for that matter? Yes, it is a satisfactory rebuttal to say that you did not understand the claim in the first place, and therefore did not relevantly refute it. -- 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.
