On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's still random. > > > No, it isn't. If it were, then his book would be about the Neuronal Basis > for The Illusion of Free Will. Free will is an illusion if you define it as incompatible with either determinism or randomness. People fall into the following categories: The world is deterministic, free will is true The world is random, free will is true The world is deterministic, free will is false The world is random, free will is false Whether the world is deterministic or random is an empirical question. Whether you define free will as compatible with determinism or randomness is not an empirical question but a question of the use of language which is of philosophical interest. > It doesn't matter though, no amount of scientific evidence will budged your > entrenched bias. I could easily think of evidence that would convince me, for example, that the moon landing was a hoax, but no conceivable evidence would have any bearing on the fact that everything is either determined or random, since this is true a priori. >> I could claim that random events in my brain are a >> manifestation of the mental acting on the physical but that's >> meaningless, since there is no substantive difference between that >> claim and its contradiction. > > > Except for the constant waking experience of every human being in history. > But don't let that count for anything. You haven't explained what difference it would make if random events in my brain ARE or ARE NOT a manifestation of the mental acting on the physical. It seems to me that I would feel exactly the same in both cases and someone examining my brain would observe exactly the same things in both cases. Do you disagree? >> >> It has to >> >> be either random or determined. >> > >> > >> > Says who? The entity whose every uttering is a random or determined >> > jittering of meaningless neural activity? >> >> Yes, and everyone else who understands what "random" and "determined" >> mean, including apparently Tse. > > > So you admit that what you say contradicts the fact that you are > intentionally saying it? "Intentional", as far as I can understand its use in philosophy, is more or less equivalent to "mental" or "conscious". You seem to take it as an a priori fact that something that is either deterministic or random cannot have intentionality. This seems to me obviously wrong. I can easily conceive of my brain being either deterministic or random and, at the same time, being conscious. Even incompatibilists can see this. They claim that if the world is deterministic then free will is a delusion, not that consciousness is a delusion. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
