On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 04:47:12PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > Morality is about "ought." This leads one to conclude that, > since morality is meaningless without "ought", morality is rather > meaningless.
No, that does not follow. Rules govern a system. They have meaning in that system. Free will, as you use it, has no real meaning. > > > I think your argument relies on complexity changing the fundamentals. > > > > You think wrong. We've been through this before. I guess you forgot. > > No, you stating something is false doesn't make it false. Whatever, Dan. I'm sure you know what "my argument" is better than I do (even though you have clearly forgotten what we discussed in the past). Why don't you just state what my argument is and then you can argue against it? Then I don't have to waste my time replying to you? You can just reply to yourself. > Fundamentally, lighting and human interaction are simply QED at work > with the exact same building blocks. So, unless complexity changes > the fundamentals, they are inherently the same. This is obviously true, as we discussed before. But it is not very useful. It is absurd to say that a star behaves similarly to a mind. They do not. > Have you ever thought that I'm not stupid and actually understood your > points. Have you? You seem to have missed that I was simply replying to you in kind. > There is the possibility that I'm trying to make a point that is not > being communicated clearly. My point is that if all human behavior is > reduced to QED, then anything that is true about QED is true about > human behavior. Anything that is not true about QED is not true about > human behavior. You have communicated it numerous times, and I have caught it every single time. You can stop now. > But the question wasn't "is there a simple phenomenological model that > allows us to bypass a full theoretical analysis?" The question is > "what are the consequences of assuming that human behavior is simply a > product of the physics underlying biochemistry?" It seems we disagree on what questions are relevant. I mentioned at the beginning of the discussion that I didn't think we would get anywhere. How can I experimentally determine whether something possesses the phenonmena you call "free will"? Unless you can answer that, we won't get anywhere. > Or, it could be that the actions of the mind is consistant with but > not reducable to phenomenon. There is no emperical evidence against > this, you know. There is no empirical evidence directly disproving a lot of things. That doesn't mean they aren't extremely unlikely. Do you claim that the human mind follows different physical rules of interaction than all other matter and energy in the universe? If so, I claim the opposite, and my claim is falsifiable -- show me the new physics. > If you are the Eric Reuter at > www.erikreuter.net No Eric Reuter there. > then this is a very pedantic arguement, based on my saying you have a BA > instead of BS. You apparently like pedantic arguments. > I always thought it helpful to deal with the ideas that someone wishes > to put forth insteads of watching for i's that are not dotted just so. > We appear to differ on this. Nope, you totally missed the point. > Proof by insult again? You started it. I'll stop when you stop. > Since it makes no sense to argue that protons, electrons, etc. ought > not to behave according to QED, it makes no sense to either say that > lightning bolts or human beings should behave in a certain manner. Well, we disagree then. A lightning bolt should behave in a certain manner, it should not strike my house, so I'll put up a lightning rod and ground it. Likewise, humans should behave in a certain manner, so we should come up with rules that work towards our common goals. > Right, but common usage assumes something you consider useless. If > you don't accept free will; persuade is no more than a convenient > fiction. Simply not true. Persuasion is a process which occurs. It is not fiction. Teaching is a process which occurs. Building is a process which occurs. These are not fiction. > OK, that means that there is no reason to accept any internal > experiences as more than convenient fictions, or at most, > interpretations of theory. Sure. That's why we need repeatable experiments to verify or falsify our knowledge. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
