Hi Marsha, I watched all those videos this morning. Thanks for posting them.
I think this is the missing part 5: http://www.youtube.com/user/infophilosopher#p/u/34/jNQ_jRU0s6w Bob Doyle sure seems to think he's got this problem licked. He seems more evangelist than philosopher at times. The question I have about his two-stage model where first comes chance them comes choice is this: after indeterminism offers possibilities HOW does one make a decision among them? Isn't that the original question still sitting there in the back of the lecture hall? We can still look into what goes into making a choice and ask whether those factors are freely chosen or not (if we want to) and so on and so on. We are back to square one. Aren't we? Why would his model prevent us from looking for and finding causal explanations for choices? Also, what is this "I" that claims to have freely chosen in his model? Why should this "I" be regarded as the final cause for the given act? It seems to me that we can always seek causal explanations on higher or lower levels of description. We can explain the choice as the desire of an individual and still ask, where do these desires come from? We can explain choices in terms of the function of a brain in response to casual laws or random quantum indeterminacy affecting neurons and lots of other ways without thinking it is meaningful to ask, which one of all the the possible ways of thinking about a given act is the ULTIMATELY correct level of description? What is the FINAL cause of the act in question? The incompatiblist approach to the question seems to presume that it is meaningful to point to something as ULTIMATE and other explanations as less real. I would LOVE to see Dennett respond to him in that seminar at Tufts he mentioned. I don't think Doyle is offering any freedom that we want that we don't have in Dennett's compatiblism. Best, Steve On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 7:21 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Greetings, > > I found the bundle of quotes below presented without explanation not very > helpful. Within the MoQ I do not understand how free-will and determinism > (soft or hard) can be other than intellectual static patterns of value. > Regardless, here are some lectures that might, at least, explain James' > free-will: > > > Marsha > 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
