The modern positivist conception of free will has no scientific meaning. But all modern rephasings of old philosophy are degraded. Positivist philosophy pass everithing down to what-we-know-by-science of the physical level, that is the only kind of substance that they admit. this "what-we-know-by-science" makes positivism a moving ground, a kind of dictatorial cartesian blindness which states the kind of questions one is permitted at a certain time to ask or not.
Classical conceptions of free will were concerned with the option ot thinking and acting morally or not, that is to have the capability to deliberate about the god or bad that a certain act implies for oneself and for others, and to act for god or for bad with this knowledge. Roughly speaking, Men have such faculties unless in slavery. Animals do not. The interesting parts are in the details of these statements. An yes, they are questions that can be expressed in more "scientific" terms. This can be seen in the evolutionary study of moral and law under multilevel selection theory: https://www.google.es/search?q=multilevel+selection&sugexp=chrome,mod=11&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 which gives a positivistic support for moral, and a precise, materialistic notion of good and bad. And thus suddenly these three concepts must be sanctioned as legitimate objects of study by the positivistic dictators, without being burnt alive to social death, out of the peer-reviewed scientific magazines, where sacred words of Modernity resides. We are witnessing this "devolution" since slowly all the old philosophical and theological concepts will recover their legitimacy, and all their old problems will stand as problems here and now. For example, we will discover that what we call Mind is nothing but the old concepts of Soul and Spirit. Concerning the degraded positivistic notion of free will, I said before that under an extended notion of evolution it is nor possible to ascertain if either the matter evolved the mind or if the mind selected the matter. So it could be said that the degraded question is meaningless and of course, non interesting. 2012/8/10, Russell Standish <[email protected]>: > On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote: >> >> > >> >It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or >> >unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of the >> >total. >> >> This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point >> which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including >> mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts, >> you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea >> of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be >> realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have >> stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think >> that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'. >> > > With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow, > I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his > "pandemonia" theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious > process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems > at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of > consciousness is to select from among the course of action > presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly > consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any unifying > (aka reductive) process may be sufficient. > > The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian > process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution > is the key to any form of creative process. > > Cheers > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > 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. > > -- 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.
