On 23 Jan 2014, at 19:14, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 2:48 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> "Free Will" is the inability to predict your own actions even in
a stable environment.
> Yes, that's (almost) my definition.
It can't be unless you've recently changed your definition. You said
on May 11, 2010:
"I don't see how the notion of moral responsibility make sense
without free-will. Without free-will everyone is innocent. Free-will
is why there are prisons."
That statement is ridiculous using my definition, it isn't coherent,
it isn't even "almost" coherent.
That's why I said "almost". I defined free-will not really by an
inability, but by the knowledge of that inability. It is the positive
ability to be aware of the spectrum related to the inability you are
mentioning. If not, your definition is obviously too much large. It
gives free-will to all inanimate object, as none can predict its own
action in a stable environment.
> Such definition belongs to the compatibilist theories of free-
will. There are books on this.
Your problem, and that of most philosophers,
I am not a philosophers. I don't do philosophy in public.
is that you don't know the difference between a theory and a
definition; as a result you spend a great deal of time trying to
prove something (we have free will) but not only are you unable to
prove it you don't even know what you're trying to prove.
No. You are just misreading me. I said "almost" above, and I was
gentle with your definition.
> 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,
When I write the word "God" I mean the same thing, or close to it,
that most people mean.
Not all, if you look at the humanity.
But when you write the letters G-o-d you mean something so general
and innocuous (something greater than yourself)
Yes, transcendentally. It is also what is responsible for our
existence. It has no name. I use the notion of God by those who
created the field of theology.
that the result is only a fool would say he doesn't believe in God.
Yes, it is the goal. mathematicians often proceed like that, to
homogenize the theoretical framework. That is why eventually 2, 1, and
even 0, became a number, which meant initially "numerous".
The problem with bad philosophers is that they can discuss on
vocabulary ... ad nauseam.
The only reason I can figure why somebody would want to do that is
if they just wanted to make the noise "I believe in God"
Did I ever said that?
What I do want to say is the theorem that all correct Löbian machine
with a minimal amount of inductive inference ability cannot not
believe in God.
and didn't care what if anything that vocalization meant.
In science we often (very often) abuse the popular sense of many word.
But I can give you a tuns of reference from theologian doing the same.
I have never met a professional theologian believing in fairy tales.
The europeans seem to be rather different from the US on this. There
are no creationists. Most people stop to believe in fairy tales at the
age of seven.
> instead of using the less gibberish sense, to focus on what we
really try to talk and share about.
If you were really interested in ideas and not in just words you
wouldn't use the ASCII sequence "G-o-d" that virtually guarantees
you will be misunderstood because it contains far more baggage than
any other word in the English language. Far far more!
My experience is that for most people mechanism is an ally to
materialism. By using the term theology (I rarely use the term "God",
except in this list, probably when answering someone), I intent to
make clear that we have to be neutral on this question and on the
religious metaphysics. So, the only problem comes from those who
criticize people before reading them.
Bruno
John K Clark
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