On 3/7/2013 4:15 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 08/03/2013, at 2:58 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com
<mailto:whatsons...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I must disagree. It is baked into the topology of classical
mechanics that a system cannot semantically act upon itself.
There is no way to define intentionality in classical physics.
This is what Bruno proves with his argument.
Exactly Stephen. What are we talking about here? How is a
deterministic system that has preferences and makes choices and
considers options different from free will. If something can have a
private preference which cannot be determined from the outside, then
it is determined privately, i.e. the will of the private determiner.
As I said, it depends on how you define "free will".
It is also not logically inconsistent with choice and free
will, unless you define these terms as inconsistent with
determinism, in which case in a deterministic world we would
have to create new words meaning pseudo-choice and pseudo-free
will to avoid misunderstanding, and then go about our business
as usual with this minor change to the language.
So you say...
Yeah, right. Why would a deterministic world need words having
anything to do with choice or free will? At what part of a computer
program is something like a choice made? Every position on the logic
tree is connected to every other by unambiguous prior cause or
intentionally generated (pseudo) randomness. It makes no choices, has
no preferences, just follows a sequence of instructions.
In general, the existence of words for something does not mean it has
an actual referent; consider "fairy" or "God". An adequate response to
your position is that you're right - we don't really have choices.
Another response is that your definition of "choice" is not the only
possible one.
--
How is linguistic analysis going to help your case? You seem to
miss the point that it is not the symbols on the page that 'contain'
meaningfulness, it is your mental act of interpretation from whence the
meaning emerges. Without a conscious mind you are as much a zombie as
John Clark and his mechanical pony.
--
Onward!
Stephen
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