On 22 Jan 2014, at 17:58, John Clark wrote:
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 8:45 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
> I think Bruno gave a good definition of 'free will' as
unpredictability (even by oneself).
Bruno's definition? For well over 20 years I have been insisting
here and elsewhere that there are only 2 definitions of Free Will
that are not gibberish, and they are almost never used:
1) "Free Will" is the inability to predict your own actions even in
a stable environment.
Yes, that's (almost) my definition. It is also yours, but *you* never
use it. Such definition belongs to the compatibilist theories of free-
will. There are books on this.
You do the same error with "free will" than with "God". You decide to
take the most gibberish sense of the word to critize the idea, instead
of using the less gibberish sense, to focus on what we really try to
talk and share about.
Bruno
2) "Free Will" is a noise made by the mouth.
> An extreme case would be the bank manager who robs his own bank
because his wife and children are held hostage.
Very extreme. A case could be made for mitigating punishment if it
could be proven that the circumstances that caused him to commit the
crime were very unusual and unlikely to be repeated in the future.
Unfortunately texting during a movie is not very unusual so I'd
throw the book at the guy who murdered a man for doing that. Junk
food like Twinkies are not very unusual either, nevertheless the
"Twinkie Defense" has allowed people to literally get away with
murder. The law is an ass:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense#Diminished_capacity
> On the other hand the man who murdered for money is obviously more
thoughtful about weighing his options
And thus is less dangerous and at least in my eyes less contemptible
than the impulse killer,
> and is more likely to be deterred by the prospect of punishment.
Granted.
> Imprisoning or executing the first man will prevent him from
shooting other texters,
I'm not at all sure imprisoning him will have that effect because
people text in prison, and people escape from prison, and who knows
what other trivial thing could send him into a homicidal rage.
John K Clark
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