Steve said:
If these two quotes are actually saying the same thing, I'd be very interested
to understand how that could be. Or are you are just doing a "Lucy" here?
dmb says:
Doing a "Lucy" is when you demand answers and then ignore the answers when they
are given. That's exactly what you do and that's why we have been going round
and round for months and months. Like I said, that's why your questions can be
answered by adding "like I said" to the answers already given. I want to quit
because you raise the same points and ask same questions over and over even
though they've already been answered - usually several times.
In fact, you recently posted that SEP quote in question as response to a long
series of quotes from Seigfried that specifically addressed James's practical,
pragmatic view of free will and determinism. But you completely ignored the
substance of Seigfried's remarks AGAIN, even though I've posted them about five
times in the last three months. It doesn't get much more "Lucy" than that.
Anyway, I think the idea in the SEP quote is that free will and determinism are
both based on the same empirical data and so the issue cannot be decided on
that basis. The difference isn't based on any practical reality. It's just a
matter of how you take it, in the same way that the optimist and the pessimist
both live in the same world. The difference is philosophic, not scientific, as
Pirsig puts it. That's what makes it a metaphysical dispute. And yet, the
Putnam quote seems to be saying, it's still true that serious practical
consequences will follow from adopting either position. They both have
devastating logical consequences, as Pirsig puts it, because we are faced with
the prospect of abandoning either science or morality. Our radical empiricists,
James and Pirsig, insist that freedom and restraint are empirical realities and
that neither should be treated as illusions or otherwise explained away by
metaphysical principles. They insist that it's an empirical question
with empirical answers.
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