[Steve] > what matters here is HOW someone decides what > to believe. Is that belief compelled or is it freely chosen?
We sometimes say "The evidence compelled him to believe his daughter committed the crime". But we also say "The evidence didn't compel him to believe his daughter committed the crime, but he believed it anyway". [Steve] > If you can't believe just whatever you want but rather only that which > appeals to your sensibilities based on the available evidence as > probably true, and since you didn't choose these sensibilities or the > evidence, then what sort of freedom is this? But prior choices do affect our sensibilities and how we weigh the evidence. [Steve] > How is this different from the "freedom" to fall when pushed > out of an airplane? The biggest difference is when we are able to choose, our choice often results. There are no known cases of someone being pushed out of an airplane & not falling. > [Craig, previously] > 1) There's something on a high shelf that I want, so I raise my arm > to reach it. [Steve] > The difference between 1) and the "freedom" to fall out of an airplane > when pushed is a matter of your ability to imagine a plausible reality > where you did not fall but rather just hung there in the sky in much the > same way as bricks don't. I don't think so. But if you want to test your theory, I suggest starting at a lower height. You want to live to see its refutation. [Steve] > The question with regard to free will in 1) is what compels the arm to > be raised? To avoid begging the question, this needs to be phrased: what, if anything, compels the arm to be raised? [Steve] > Is it..an extra-added ingredient that is called "free will"? Trying to make sense of "free will compelling an action" will only lead to a morass. [Steve] > Occam's Razor should lead > you to believe that the the extra-added ingredient is unnecessary to > explain what happened and provides no additional explanatory value for > why you raised your arm. Q: Why did the mass murderer open fire on the crowd? A1: He chose to. A2: He was compelled to. Which has better explanatory value? Occam's razor cuts both ways. What is this compulsion we have when we don't feel compelled? Perhaps the cases of free will are just the cases where there is no compulsion. Craig 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
