On 7/30/2012 4:01 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Le 28-juil.-12, à 18:46, John Clark a écrit :
On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> You goal does not seem in discussing ideas, but in mocking people.
That is not true, my goal has two parts:
1) Figuring out what you mean by "free will".
Free-will is an informal term use in many informal setting. religious people defined it
often by the ability to choose consciously between doing bad things or not, and people
from the law can invoke it as a general precondition for making sense of the
responsibility idea. In cognitive science we can at least approximate it in different
ways, and basically, with computationalism it is the ability to make choice in absence
of complete information, and knowledge of that incomplete feature.
I'm not clear on why you emphasize incomplete information? What would constitute complete
information? and why how would that obviate 'free will'. Is it coercive?
The "Free" prefix is just an emphasis, and I don't take it too much seriously. It can
be mean things like absence of coercion.
2) Figuring out if what you say about "free will" is true.
We cannot know truth, but can propose hypotheses and definition, and then reason from
there.
I have never completed the first goal, so it's a bit maddening when you keep claiming
over and over and over that sometime in the unspecified past you provided a marvelous
exact self consistent definition of "free will" that makes everything clear and that
for some unspecified reason, or perhaps for no reason at all, I am ignoring it.
I never said that such a definition makes everything clear, nor do I have said it was
marvelous, nor even self-consistent. I did say that you ignore it, for reason which
eludes me, but which I guess is a lack of interest in the corresponding mundane notions,
which is the object of many studies, books, debate, etc.
>The onoly question is in solving problem. To say "free will" is noise just hides
problems.
Before I can solve a problem I need to know what the problem is and I don't, and you
don't know either.
You just seem to be unaware of all the questions in the foundation of the cognitive
science. May be you could read tthe book by Micahel Tye: "eight problems on consciousness".
I don't find any link to either the book or the author. Can you point to a
source?
Free will is one of them. It is clear and quite readable. Of course the author is not
aware that comp is incompatible with physicalism.
> You really talk like a pseudo-priest having answers to all questions.
Wow, calling a guy who doesn't like religion religious! Never heard that one before, at
least not before the sixth grade.
If you don't believe in some fundamental reality, then we are just wasting time when
discussing with you, given that this list is devoted in the search of a theory of
everything. If you believe in some fundamental reality, then you are religious in the
larger (non necessarily christian) sense that I have already given.
In the fundamental science, those who pretend not doing religion are the most religious,
but probably they are not aware of this.
I'd say that you are more wedded to the words 'religion' and 'God' than the concepts which
they formerly denoted. :-)
Brent
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