Hi Ham, Steve: >> My point was to say that free will/determinism is an issue with no >> practical consequences and therefore a fake philosophical problem >> not that we ought to "choose free will." What could it ever mean >> to behave as though you don't have any choice in the matter at hand? >> It is to ask, what would you choose if you had no choice? >> A nonsensical question.
Ham: > No practical consequences? If you hear a ticking sound in a room you > suspect might be wired with a detonation device, and you decide to ignore it > rather than exit the room, is your death from an explosion not a practical > consequence? Steve: You are missing the point. The question is not whether actions have consequences, but rather where that decision to exit the room or not comes from. Ham: > Would you say that Value (or Quality) predetermines such choices? Or that, > in David's words, "All we can do is play the roles exactly as they were > written"? I don't think so. Steve: Nope. I'm just saying that the future follows from the present which follows from the past to the extent that we can tell stories about how we got from the past to the present in terms of causes and effects and constantly work on improving those stories to better enable us to predict the future. I don't think we will ever get very good at predicting the future though we have a good mastery of some situations which can be well-described by simple laws from physics. The future is determined by the present and the past in the sense that when we get there, we will be able to tell stories in terms of actions and consequences to explain how we got from the past to the present. This is always a backward looking and very weak sort of determinism (what we will do is determined by what we are and the circumstances in which we act, and what we are changes over time according to what we do rather than imagining an immutable entity located in the soul as the seat of our will) unless we toss in the notion of an omnipotent being who already knows what will happen where we then have to imagine a future which is already written and cannot be avoided. Then we have fatalism. I don't think that the fact that we will always be able to tell stories about actions and consequences to explain how we got from the past to the present without appeal to an extra-added ingredient must lead to fatalism. I don't see how it even CAN lead to fatalism without imagining an omniscient god. Ham: > I can only wonder at the "reasonableness" of a philosophy that is determined > to undermine man's innate freedom. Steve: Freedom from what? What do you think your idea of free will helps you to escape? A chain of causality perhaps? MOQers are not bound the chain you seem to think we are. In the MOQ, causality is an intellectual pattern. It is part of a late evolutionary development. It is not something viewed as foundational for reality. It is a tool for coping with reality. Best, Steve 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
