On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: > You just evade the definition of free will that I gave to you,
You're going to need to be a lot more specific than that. I'd need to use scientific notation to count the number of definitions of the "free will" noise I've heard over the last few months, but every single one of them turns out to be just translations and paraphrasing of the original gibberish. > And I don't give a damn if its "compatibilist" or "incompatibilist" >> (whatever the hell that means), >> > > > Those are the standard terms used in the literature. And the "literature" has all the intellectual depth of a child's finger painting. The word "compatibilist" means everything happens for a reason and "incompatibilist" means some things do not, and the "free will" noise makes no sense under either worldview, no sense whatsoever. > > Everything happens for a reason. > And you call me religious?! There is no law of logic that demands that must be true, and there is considerable experimental evidence that seems to indicates it probably is not; so for you to state the above without qualification is nothing but a act of religious devotion. > Again, I have to insist that I defend a notion of compatibilist free > will. The fact that someone can determine in advance what I will do does > NOT entails that I am not doing it with my own (free) will, You did X because you wanted to, but you're a compatibilist so you must believe that something caused you to want it and that something were different you would not want it. Fine, that might even be true (although it probably is not) but then what's the point of the "free will" noise? You say you don't insist on the "free" in "free will" but I don't quite believe it, if you just said "will" we wouldn't be having this debate, but you still use it. As I've said many times I have absolutely no problem with the word "will" because it's perfectly clear that we want some things and don't want others, but from context I know that "free will" is supposed to mean something more than that but I'll be damned if I know what. All I'm saying is that our will is in the state it is in for a reason or it is not, and to claim otherwise is idiotic. > This is called reductionist thinking Reductionist thinking is the practical idea that we don't have to understand everything to understand something, and without it there would be no hope of knowing even approximately how the world works. If we had to know everything to know anything we would live in perpetual ignorance. >> Obviously we don't know what the result of a calculation will be until >> we finish the calculation, >> > > >Certainly not "for all" computations, of course. WHAT?! If you already know what the result of a calculation is what's the point of doing the calculation? > From this and Good's definition, we (Me, Pooper) can show that free will > and thus consciousness Apparently both you and Pooper think the relationship between the "free will" noise and consciousness is obvious, but for me it is about as far from obvious as you can get. > has an important role: the role of speeding up the computation in the > environment. If we're willing to forgo a little certainty computation in the environment can be sped up considerably by making use of things like probability and rules of thumb; in the real world we don't just use if X and Y then Z, we also use if X and Y then probably Z. And induction is at least as important as deduction maybe more so because, although nobody knows why, it is a fact that in the real world things usually continue. > > In some paper Good will even (re)define free will You mean he even redefines the "free will" noise so that it actually means something? That I'd like to see. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
