Hi dmb, On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:02 AM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > Andre said to Steve: > I see lots of static stuff being generated here with the aim of making "life" > nice and predictable, virtually shutting out any possibility of Dynamic > insights/change to ever be recognized let alone acted upon. This is SOM all > the way it seems to me... >
> Steve replied to Andre: > You are using SOM as a catch-all criticism here (as is too often done in this > forum) of what I'm saying sounding stale to you. It's fine if you think it is > static, but to say that it is SOM is just false. I have not invoked a subject > object metaphysical view. I have explained what is left of "determinism" once > we SUBTRACT the metaphysical baggage. > > > > dmb says: > If you don't think you've invoked SOM during this debate, Steve, then you're > not listening to yourself and you don't understand the nature of your own > expert "evidence", such as the quotes from Harris and Parfit for example. I'm > not saying they're stupid but they both are looking at the issue from the > perspective of scientific objectivity, particularly physicalist reductionism. > For Harris, moral problems are essentially neurological problems and Parfit's > thought experiment is predicated on rewinding the laws of causality. Steve: Your hero James appoached the question of determinism in exactly the same way as I quoted yesterday...."imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate the ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door..." dmb: Invoking them is invoking SOM, whether you realize it or not. Even if we generously assume that you don't really endorse their metaphysical assumptions, that you were just using them to make a point, it is still - at best - very confusing. It makes no sense to try to get at the MOQ by way of SOM thinkers. Steve: Calling the ideas of "SOM thinkers" automatically wrong on the basis that they were asserted by "SOM thinkers" is just low quality ad hominem BS. You need to point out where exactly the reasoning of the particular argument in question depends on the assumption of the S/O picture if in fact it does and show how he logic falls apart without that assumption. The case of saying "imagine that the powers governing the universe annihilate the ten minutes of time with all that it contained, and set me back at the door of the door to this hall just as I was before the choice was made" as James did in order to understand what my be meant by "could have acted differently simply doesn't get defeated with name calling (e.g. SOMer!). What I did with Parfit was simply ask you what you mean by "could have acted differently" as a definition for free will. Parfit's quote points out that "could have acted differently" can just mean "if you had wanted to" which doesn't do any work to distinguish between whether or not that "wanting" itself is free or determined. It just isn't a sufficient definition for distinguishing free will from determinism. Now where exactly did I invoke an SOM premise in that discussion? And by the way, if the condition you were referring to in "could have acted differently" was not "if you had wanted to" then you still have never made explicit what that condition was. dmb: > I'd also point out that you're dragging SOM into these debates in other ways > as well, not the least of which is your insistence that operative terms like > "free will" are somehow superglued to the assumptions of SOM. As a result, > you keep adding these SOM assumptions and to my position even though there > was never any good reason to add them in the first and I've protested against > this unwanted baggage many times. Steve: Yes, I think the notion of "the will" makes it hard to wield the term "free will" to talk about freedom in way that is not an SOM conception of freedom since will is defined as "the mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action." I still think it would be best to drop that word when talking about freedom so as to avoid being misunderstood since freedom is not thought of as a characteristic possessed by a "mental faculty" and since and since DQ is defined as pre-intellectual in contrast to "will" which is defined as rational and deliberate choosing. 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
