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MetaphysicsNow

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…and it’s a fact. It’s a true conditional proposition. It is not a fact, and it does not even express a fact. At best it is a logically valid argument...
May 16, 2018 at 21:26
Thanks - but it appears to be just a link to a page of this thread - could you relink?
May 16, 2018 at 18:17
Regarding premise 3) - one thing to bear in mind when discussing QM and truth is that you have, on the one hand, the formalism of QM which provides ex...
May 16, 2018 at 16:59
Regarding premise 1), I'm not sure what the argument there is. It seems to me that PSR is compatible with more relaxed forms of determinism, but I'd b...
May 16, 2018 at 16:56
Regarding premise 2), the idea is that under a very strict understanding of determinism, if the state of a system at time t is fully determined, then ...
May 16, 2018 at 16:53
I don't know. I do know that I have met people who are unhappy and frustrated because the world does not meet their expectations of it, so I suppose l...
May 16, 2018 at 16:46
Taking the opportunity to respond on tom's behalf, I think the usual argument concerning QM and PSR is along the following lines: 1) If PSR is true, t...
May 16, 2018 at 16:38
If by "a lover of opinion" you mean "one who is unwilling to admit to error and will make all manner of argumentative tricks in order to avoid admitti...
May 16, 2018 at 16:10
Yes, shame on you @"Michael" for providing Tom with a perfect opportunity to avoid responding to the challenge :wink:
May 16, 2018 at 16:03
Nobody is saying that choice is not possible. What the PSR entails is that there is no such thing as freedom of will in the sense used by the authors ...
May 16, 2018 at 16:01
OK, well I guess the authors meant something like "the choice is not the outcome of a function..." so it seems reasonable to think that the PSR does r...
May 16, 2018 at 15:18
Tom seems to believe that denying the existence of free will in this sense entails that science is not possible. I'd like to see the argument for that...
May 16, 2018 at 15:02
But please don't just leave it at that. It would take a very specific understanding of what free will amounts to for its existence to refute the PSR. ...
May 16, 2018 at 14:58
Infinite, but ever decreasing, circularity perhaps :wink:
May 16, 2018 at 14:28
:up: Thank you for summing up concisely exactly what I've been trying to express in my admittedly rather long winded fashion. Let's hope that tom now ...
May 16, 2018 at 14:21
Read the paper - the authors are quite clear that the FWT states precisely and only that the measurement outcomes are free in the sense that the measu...
May 16, 2018 at 14:11
There appears to be some fundamental difference of understanding about what the FWT is, so in an effort to get at precisely what that difference of un...
May 16, 2018 at 12:34
But I cannot resist one last parting word before moving on - I know, it's a weakness of mine: Consider the following schemas: 1) It is possible that P...
May 16, 2018 at 11:48
On the comparison of humans with animals, I'm not sure animals are capable of joy and sorrow. They are perhaps capable of feeling pleasure, pain and o...
May 16, 2018 at 11:29
Nope, you've lost me completely - I'll have to move on to other posts.
May 16, 2018 at 11:06
Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent of probabilistic causation, but the basic idea would seem to be that the challenge QM poses for the trad...
May 16, 2018 at 09:57
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Hegel yet on this thread. I'm no expert, but he did introduce an evolutionary conception of existence, so if realit...
May 16, 2018 at 09:30
The FWT does not prove that there are uncaused events, it proves only that if there are uncaused events (the free will choices of experimenters) then ...
May 16, 2018 at 09:14
Yes: take a look here for instance probabilistic causation
May 16, 2018 at 09:12
Why are you asking me for specifics like that - I'm not proposing that they should be used at all. All I'm saying is that the very notion of a pseudo-...
May 16, 2018 at 09:04
Well perhaps I chose an inappropriate metaphor - but the idea that everything is explicable is a motivation for pursuing explanations, and science is ...
May 16, 2018 at 08:59
Well, quantum random number generators exist if that's what you mean, but if you are going to use that as a definition of free will used in the FWT th...
May 16, 2018 at 08:58
Not really - there are probabilistic conceptions of causality that are perfectly compatible with QM. What some people claim is that QM refutes the "ex...
May 16, 2018 at 08:54
Odd, perhaps, but if that's where a true principle or an apriori principle of thought or whatever it is taken to be leads, so be it: a principle that ...
May 16, 2018 at 08:46
No, I don't see this, since as I pointed out, what is going to count as impossible is going to change depending on the circumstances just as much as w...
May 16, 2018 at 06:46
I think this is probably how those who wish to treat it axiomaticallly in some sense need to take it - something like a rule for thought, which is wha...
May 16, 2018 at 06:39
You cannot refute a principle on the basis of an assumption which the principle (arguably) entails is false: that's called question begging. That's a ...
May 15, 2018 at 16:02
Well, and I'm not saying I agree with this, but I've heard some people claim that the virtual particles of QM are precisely things for which ex nihilo...
May 15, 2018 at 15:45
Sly move - turning the PSR against itself. Indeed if it is to be treated as an axiom, it's truth might have to be taken to be a brute fact, and that w...
May 15, 2018 at 15:37
Interesting, how so? Naively, the way to refute the PSR would be to establish that there are somethings that occur for no reason at all. Is the point ...
May 15, 2018 at 15:06
That is true, but I thought your position was that the FWT refutes the PSR. It doesn't, and precisely because of the fact that the theorem is a condit...
May 15, 2018 at 15:01
I fear you are confusing facts with propositions: In the above quotation the following conditional: If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jaberwocke...
May 15, 2018 at 14:53
With the caveat that I have only skim read the article, the authors do nothing to recuperate their philosophical credentials by the end of the paper. ...
May 15, 2018 at 13:48
Admittedly I've only just started reading the article, but they appear to be helping themselves to the notion of free will, which is precisely one of ...
May 15, 2018 at 13:19
If I love an opinion and the opinion is true, does that make me a lover of truth or a lover of opinion, or both at the same time?
May 15, 2018 at 12:48
If I give a reason for something, I'm not necessarily proving it. If I have a black eye and you ask why and I say I annoyed someone so much that they ...
May 15, 2018 at 10:18
This hits a certain "nail on the head". Marx famously had England in mind as the country sufficiently developed enough to make socialism a reality - h...
May 15, 2018 at 09:11
I think what we owe to Hegel is the idea that philosophy and its subject matter is evolutionary. I'm not saying I agree with Hegel, in fact there are ...
May 15, 2018 at 08:51
And let's not forget Schopenhauer's doctoral thesis "On the Four-Fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason", which distinguishes four versions o...
May 15, 2018 at 08:30
What do you mean by Marx underestimating the power of competition? I've come across many so-called refutations of Marx's economics - from some very na...
May 14, 2018 at 15:19
I think Marx's position on the resilience of capitalism is more nuanced than some have assumed, and let's not forget that even in Captial itself he pr...
May 14, 2018 at 11:03
:up: Thanks for that link. Edit: Just read the piece - it's a neat, if plagiaristic summary of some of Volume 1 of Capital. Shame on Albert for not ac...
May 14, 2018 at 10:47
Have you read volume 2 of Capital? Most people don"t bother - they just read the "potboiling" volume 1 and then skip to volume 3, but it is in volume ...
May 14, 2018 at 10:41
You need to put Marx's claims about the labour theory of value into context. Yes it is true that at the beginning of Capital Vol 1 he provides an a pr...
May 14, 2018 at 10:27
Why would it be idiotic? I'm certainly not suggesting that people with schizophrenia or bipolar syndrome can just "snap out of it" all by themselves: ...
May 14, 2018 at 09:15