On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> > religious people defined it [free will] often by the ability to choose > consciously And those very same religious people define consciousness as the ability to have free will, and around and around we go. > and people from the law can invoke it as a general precondition for > making sense of the responsibility idea. That is precisely what it does NOT do and is why the "free will" noise turns the idea of responsibility, which is needed for any society to work, into ridiculous self contradictory idiocy. > The "Free" prefix is just an emphasis, and I don't take it too much > seriously. You say that but I don't believe it and I don't think even you really believe it, otherwise you'd just say "will" means you want to do some things and don't want to do other things and we'd move on and talk about other things, but you can't seem to do that and keep inserting more bafflegab into the free will "idea" and not the will idea. > It can be mean things like absence of coercion. In other words I can't do everything I want to do. I don't need a philosopher to figure that out and doesn't deserve the many many millions of words they have written about "free will"? > I never said that such a definition makes everything clear, nor do I have > said it was marvelous, nor even self-consistent. I did say that you ignore > it, for reason which eludes me, I don't ignore "it", in fact in post after post after post I have asked you, almost begged you, to tell me even approximately if that's the best you can do, what "it" is; but for reasons which eludes me you will not do so. > The first person indeterminacy has nothing to do with free will. I don't know what "first person indeterminacy" is but I know that your above statement is true because nothing has anything to do with free will. > In "Conscience et Mécanisme" I even use it to explain that free will has > nothing to do with absolute determinacy or indeterminacy. In other words free will has nothing to do with things that happen for a reason and free will has nothing to do with things that do not happen for a reason. I agree, and that means that free will is something that doesn't do anything, so free will does have one property, infinite dullness. > In the human fundamental sense, most of the time we don't have > definition, > That is very true. Except for mathematics and formal logic precise definitions are usually not very important because we have something better, examples. If you can't provide a definition then give me a set containing examples of things that have free will and a set containing examples of things that don't have free will; and be consistent about it, explain why elements like Bruno Marchal and John K Clark belong in the same set but elements like Cuckoo Clocks and Roulette Wheels belong in the other set. > Free-will, or will, is acknowledged *relative* self-indeterminacy. Now that's better, much better. I have said many times there are only 2 definitions of free will that are not gibberish: 1) Free Will is a noise made by the mouth. 2) Free Will is the inability to always predict ones actions even in a unchanging environment. > We can't define consciousness, but We all have a EXCELLENT example of such a thing. > > You cannot say "I don't know what is free-will, yet I do criticize the > definition you give". There are only 2 reasons for criticizing a definition about anything: 1) It is unclear. 2) It is inconsistent. Every definition of "Free Will" I have ever heard in my life, except for the two mentioned previously, fail for one or both of these reasons. > You come back on the inconsistent definition of free will, that we both > agree make no sense. So why do you reject the one I gave Oh no not again! I'd sure like to know what this marvelous definition of free will that you keep saying you made sometime ago could be! You keep talking about "it" but I don't know what "it" is, "it" is starting to take on mythic qualities, like Unicorns or Hobbits. > I gave a definition. > Maybe you did during the age of Middle Earth but I think its time to repeat it. > you reject it As long as its clear and self consistent only a idiot rejects definitions. I am not a idiot. The fact that I can always draw conclusions from your many definitions that you find emotionally unappealing does not make them illogical. I was just saying that I am not applying the excluded middle outside comp > and arithmetic. [...] I don't believe in the law of the excluded middle > when applied on arbitrary set notions So if I tell you the perfectly true statement "I was hit by lightning at noon" and you believe me completely you could nevertheless deduce that I might not have been hit by lightning at noon because X being true does not imply that ~X is false. I really don't think that's a good way to figure out how the world works. it's hard enough already. 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.
