On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: >> so we end up making no choice at all or we make a choice based on >> nothing, in other words at random. >> > > > I don't believe we can make choice at random.
Fine, I don't think that's true but as far as this discussion goes it wouldn't matter if it was. If the choice was not random then it happened for a reason and was deterministic; and the "free will" noise is just as meaningless as it would be if choices were random. > > Very often, when people hesitate, I suggest to make a choice with a coin > or dice. usually people hate to do that, And yet very often people have great difficulty explaining, even to themselves, why they made the choice they did; so either there was no reason for the choice or there was but the conscious mind does not know what it was, those are the only two possibilities and neither elevates the "free will" noise even one Planck Length above pure gibberish. >> The following is not deep but it is true: You are aware that sometimes >> you are not aware of the cause of your action and you are also aware that >> you don't know what the result of a calculation is until you have finished >> the calculation. Is this pap the marvelous new definition of the free will >> noise that you claimed you had yesterday, the one you said that "many of us >> have given new precise, and compatibilist, definition of" ? >> > > > It is close. It has been defended by Popper, I.J. Good and some others, > and it suits well mechanism. This needs to be defended?? I admit that tautologies have the virtue of being true but I would have thought it would be embarrassing for two grown men, let alone two famous philosophers, to think that this childish observation deserves the millions of words they have churned out about it which all boils down to "we don't know what we don't know". John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
