Patterner

I understand that there are options. But if I chose which path to take when I hiked down a mountain the same way a boulder chose which path to take wh...

How is an act intentional if there is no option but to act, and in that exact way?

Perhaps I misunderstand your use of the words "choice" and "agency." What you describe still sounds like an avalanche. It's possible for a boulder to ...

As I was going back and forth between the two doors of Ben & Jerry's in the freezer section at the store today, picking up several and reading the des...

Unfortunately, I would have to pay $61 to read that. And that is nothing close to a guarantee I would understand it.

Yes, that is my understanding of LD.

But a thing with the perceptions and intellect to understand everything, whether or not it interacted with anything, is not a necessary part of an ent...

I think I am finally understanding you. :grin: I don't know if you changed your wording in such a way that I finally caught on, or if I was just too d...

This is what I'm trying to understand about where some of you - you two in particular, at the moment, but others who are not posting in this thread - ...

Why is that? Whether I chose to write a comment or not, it is a decision. I have perceived what I perceived. It is all converted into bio-electric imp...

Second scenario is fine. Not at all scary. Dying can be scary. Being dead isn't.

Yes, I understand. But why can't how a model takes itself into account be calculated? That's just more input fed into the algorithm.

I believe the idea is that all of our actions are determined by the progressions of arrangements of all the constituents of our brains. Mental states ...

The causes of some events are more complicated than others. The causes of our simplest actions are probably more complicated than the causes of most e...

I'm asking for a definition. I've been expressing what I take determinism to be. I tried to be as clear as I could here: https://thephilosophyforum.co...

Why is determinism called determinism? What is deterministic about it?

That's a very long thread, and he has some great stuff to say. And you can't go wrong with scifi. :grin:

Your post brings a post on another site to mind. https://kevinswatch.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=1098685#p1098685 It's a site dedicated to a series of ...

Can you define "freedom"? Freedom from what? Can you give me an example of a free action? Also, by "reasonably reliable", do you mean the casual netwo...

Unlimited determinism is still determinism. That's my point. Many say we can make choices within an entirely deterministic reality. My position is tha...

Sorry. Not ignoring you. I would answer you as I just did ssu. Ssu's was last, so I just quoted that post.

If I knock a glass off of a table, I do not think it is preordained that it will then fall to the floor and break into pieces. But it will fall to the...

It seems to me that the idea of choices in a deterministic reality is a sham. Sure, it is possible for a human to choose cake over ice cream. But when...

I guess the idea is common enough. In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil writes: Of course, there is much debate over whether or not consciousness is ...

I recently posted the following to @"Relativist" when we were talking about Peter Tse's The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation. ----------...

I guess the Matrix is a simulation to many sentient programs, and VR to many other sentient programs (Smith and Oracle, for example) and humans.

Thanks! After decades of reading fantasy/scifi, I haven't been able to get started for the last few years.

If I could makes any one book required reading for everyone, it would probably be Dune.

Heh. Thanks, but I'm not overly concerned with these mis-taps. I was just thinking that knowing I was doing something I didn't want to be doing, but b...

And they usually fail, it seems to me. The large muscles that are in motion can't be stopped sufficiently by the smaller ones. Still, they are able to...

But, for some reason, even though the movement began, just as when I start to tap the icon, the batter can put a stop to it, unlike me with the finger...

That makes perfect sense. Thank you very much. I wonder what happens when a batter tries to check his swing.

I'm apparently not describing the situation very well. It's not a visual problem at all. I should scroll twice before tappint the top left icon. But I...

Thanks. Never heard of that.

Heh. I'm thinking it's something that might be common in people, like those other things I mentioned. I learned long ago that I'm not the first person...

Yes. If human minds exist because of physics. Or, since the human body, particularly the brain, seems indispensable for the existence of human minds, ...

Indeed. Fundamental things are not responsible for books, televisions, the internet, space shuttles, music, automobiles, bombs, poetry, mathematics, a...

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

What makes free will possible? That's what I'm asking. I suspect the reason believers who don't engage in empirical research don't engage in empirical...

Agreed. The question of freedom arises when asking whether or not the decision to fix the race is anything other than physical interactions. Are we an...

Right. But our will is the result of physical interactions. Regardless of their complexity, physical interactional are physical interactions. -Physica...

The pool balls can come to rest in a huge number of arrangements after being struck by the cue ball at the break. But I wouldn't say any arrangement i...

If entities create a simulation that includes other entities that do not have free will, the creators would be ... what's there right word ... idiots ...

I know there's no agreement regarding free will. But if we have free will, then we aren't simulations. I mean, how can you use rules and code to write...

Why are we simulating? Where will Voyager 1 be in fifty years? We don't simulate it's existence for every moment of the next fifty years. We just calc...

Sure. Demons are supernatural. I've never heard of a story with one that wasn't. Hey, how about this idea... To try to put a natural entity in this ro...

It's a supernatural being in a thought experiment. I don't know how to put limits on that. It's all silly.

Demons are made of atoms? I had no idea.

I don't know why you think that, even in principle, the demon cannot exist inside of the same universe it's capable of predicting, even if that univer...

I don't know what you have in mind. But if it's the first thing I can think of, I disagree. First, it could, itself, be ruled entirely by determinism....