On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 6:21 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote: > >>> >> I have noticed a disturbing trend, the use of the word "emergent" as a >>> >> excuse for not thinking. >> >> >> > Sometimes that might be the case. Here, it's context. Free will is a >> > human concept. > > > That is incorrect,"free will" is not a human concept, "free will" is a human > noise.
I agree that "free will" is an ill-defined concept. There are many interesting ill-defined concepts. This is usually a symptom that there's something fundamental that we are missing, because these ideas don't spring out of nowhere. Free will is related to the issue of determinism -- could a very powerful computer precisely predict my future behaviour? And if not, is there an "I" that has ultimate control over my decisions? In that case, what is this "I"? You surely have asked these things yourself, even if you pretend you did not for the sake of argument. >"Moo" is a bovine noise. And when somebody says something is > emergent, unless they give at least a hint of how it emerges and why, all > they're really pointing out is the limitations common words have in uncommon > situations; we usually don't encounter just one water molecule and the usual > understanding of the word "wet" works fine until we get to that level. Ok, unless they give a hint of how it emerges and why. I can agree with that. Otherwise, emergence is an explanatory tool _because_ it hand-waves details. If our brains were not limited, we would not need explanation. We could just look at the totality of reality for exactly what it is. It would be like explaining the number 1. There would be nothing to explain. Explanation is how to know more without having to know everything. Telmo. > John K Clark > > -- > 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. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
