I don't agree that philosophers do have a bad name, save that they
don't employ falsifiability. Falsifying was a term invented by a
philosopher. I forget his name. Kark Popper! That's it! Also, many
scientists by nature are logical positivists, even though this is a
philosophical concept from the 19th century. On free will, I simply say
that free will is knowing what you love or hate. An example would be
asking a person carried off and bounced along the ground by a tornado,
"How do you like it so far? And the victim could reply, Ah! I could do
better without it." the victim would be correct of course, but that is
free will-having an opinion of yourself. Free will doesn't seem to
mean, in control of events.
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 5:39 pm
Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
I don't think that having different concepts or perspectives means that
people don't know what they are talking about. Free will is a concept
which is so fundamental that it is literally necessary to have free
will before you can ask the question of what it is. I think that it is
the claim that we don't know or can't know what words like free will
and consciousness refer to which are more of a distraction.
In the days before computers, physicists and mathematicians spent
decades poring over there slide rules and logarithm tables. Some made
new discoveries, but most did not. I don't see any difference with
philosophical debate. Not everyone wants to be limited to thinking
about things which can be detected by inanimate objects. I wouldn't
waste my time focusing so narrowly on that aspect of the universe, but
I wouldn't begrudge someone else that right. Why should it bother me if
people argue about esoteric terms or count blips from a particle
accelerator?
On Friday, September 6, 2013 2:34:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote:This is
what gives philosophers a bad name! In just one day people have sent
the following philosophical gems to the list, enough hot air to
signifacantly contribute to global warming,
* I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”.
But if I do [blah blah]
* How do you explain the experience of “free will” then?
* The experience of free will is not a snap shot, instead it [blah
blah]
* If free will exists (and also of course that we have it) then [blah
blah]
* If instead free will does not in fact exist, then [blah blah]
* consciousness necessarily must exist in the first place in order for
free will to exist.
* Are you maintain that the experience of free will does not itself
exist?
* Can you conceive of “free will” without introducing a subject in
which it arises and is experienced?
And so it goes, on and on arguing about if free will exists or not, but
never once does anybody stop to ask what the hell "free will" means
before giving their opinion about it's existence. People argue
passionately but they don't know what they're talking about, by that I
don't mean that what they are saying is wrong, I mean that they quite
literally DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT.
When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter
with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and
why he developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers. I
gave this quotation before but apparently it needs repeating:
"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit
with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I
thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing,
so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.
When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very
seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were
using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they
were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own
conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few
occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still
didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.
They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a
week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy
would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went
to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding
myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going
there just to watch.
What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable,
but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is
almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the
chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words
"essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had
defined, but that I didn't understand.
After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the
professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things
and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard.
"Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential
object'?"
Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so
I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to
watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if
you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea
of what 'essential object' means.
What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought
theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory
that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that
we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear
by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be,
"What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that
no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the
brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a
simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of
electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential
object?"
Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an
individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an
essential object."
Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an
essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in
common - their 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."
Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves.
'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you
think of bricks."
Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such
ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like
it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete
chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked
themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an
electron, is an "essential object"."
John K Clark
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