On 17 Jun 2012, at 06:25, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/16/2012 8:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 2:17 AM, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net>
wrote:
It seems pretty clear. It's an ability to make decisions in a
spirit realm
and have them implemented in the physical realm. That entails
that physics
is not closed, i.e. some physical events happen for a purpose but
without an
antecedent physical cause. This not meaningless because with
sufficient
experimental resolution it could be tested. If we could follow in
detail
the workings of a subject's brain and we found that there were
physically
uncaused events that led to actions and decisions and these events
almost
always contributed to the realization of express plans, values,
and desires
of the subject then we would have say that was evidence for nc-
free-will.
How would that be non-compatibilist free will?
It's not compatible with physical determinism. I'm sure what
spiritual determinism would mean.
The processes in the
spiritual realm would still either be determined or random,
Would it? Or is that just an assumption? Is it necessary that there
be laws that determine everything not random by antecedent states?
It's not so clear to me.
and we
would still have to decide whether they were consistent with what we
wanted to call "free will" or not.
Well Sam Harris says that's what everybody who believes in 'free
will' thinks it means. Personally, I'm a compatibilist; but I
understand the problem people have with compatibilism. If your
actions are determined by something outside of you then they are not
an expression of your 'free will', but under determinism every one
of your actions can be traced back to causes outside of you - even
to before your birth. They conclude from this that determinism
precludes 'free will'. I conclude that 'free will' is an
approximate social concept which depends on our ignorance.
You might say so, but it is still "real", for saying it is not real
because it is a higher level notion depending on our ignorance, would
make matter and physical realities also unreal, because they might
also be approximate social concepts depending on our ignorance (and
most plausibly is, assuming digital mechanism).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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