On May 2, 2011, at 12:37 PM, david buchanan wrote: > > MarshaV said to Steve: > Isn't free will dependent on causation, and isn't causation, in the MoQ, an > explanatory extension of a pattern?
Marsha: It was a rhetorical question. I mean causation is pattern, regularities, convention. Explanation relies on patterns. Patterns are explained by referring to further patterns. Patterns (analogies) all the way down. > > dmb says: > No, causation rules out free will. Determinism is predicated on the laws of > causality. Free will says we are not bound by such laws. > Take the classic example. On a billiards table, you move the cue stick which > sends the cue ball toward the eight ball and the eight ball drops into the > corner pocket. Intellectually we chop this into the parts just named. The > player "causes" the cue stick to hit the cue ball which "causes" the eight > ball to move into the pocket. Once you chop it up into discrete segments, > you've got to figure out a way to reunite these events. That's where > causality comes in to save the day. > But stop for a moment and re-think this. How did the player's shot ever get > disconnected to the movement of the cue ball or the eight ball. Isn't all of > that really one continuous action? Those events don't just go together like > cookies and milk. They were already seamlessly connected before we started > dividing the thing into parts. > It's the same kind of logic Zeno used to prove that motion was impossible, to > prove that an arrow could never reach its target. This is achieved by > eternally dividing the remaining distance in half so that the arrow can only > ever get half way. Even though that half grows infinitely smaller and > smaller, the target will be reached. See, by using logic and math we can > divide the line between the shooter and the target into an infinite number of > segments and thereby "prove" that ordinary events are impossible. It just > shows how absurd and ridiculous logic can be. This is the logic that tells us > to place our bets on the tortoise instead of the hare. (I heard that story as > a ten year old and even then I knew it was bullshit.) > It's so much simpler to avoid the logic chopping in the first place. Then we > don't have to invent mysterious forces behind the scenes to reunite or > reconnect the fragments. This is why radical empiricism puts so much emphasis > on the continuity of experience and stresses what he calls the "conjunctive > relations". Imagine how confusing and distorted these sentences would be if > you removed all the grammatical conjunctions. That's what logic chopping does > to experience. Obviously, projectiles of all sorts hit their targets all the > time. Arrows, runners, bullets, basketballs and hockey pucks reach their > intended destinations all the time. It's no problem, not until the chopping > starts. > Let's say Zeno had one of those fake arrows through his head and his tongue > in his cheek. Let's say causality is just another word for the fact that > things and event sometimes go together. > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
