Relativist

We probably agree with this: If a person is forced into performing a crime he is not responsible or accountable. If he was not forced into performing ...

Yikes! It's only an hour earlier here. I guess we both got carried away. Fun conversation.

I would like you to understand that free will is actually consistent with determinism - you too hastily dismissed that. It's as free as it needs to be...

That's my point: they DO have free will - no one is making them do the wrong thing. Sure, that they would choose to do wrong is a product of outside f...

I agree with this, but it ignores moral accountability. Engaging in bad acts (murder, stealing...) is (and should be) discouraged by holding people ac...

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Agreed.

Of course not. It was predictable, but that doesn't change the fact that the choice was a product of my internal processing - and I ate what I wanted....

The Grand Canyon's shape and our choices have this in common: they are inevitable. What is unique about ourselves is that we are complex decision-maki...

Because the big bang did not decide that I would eat corn flakes for breakfast. I made the choice, based on my own desires at the time. If I do what I...

Yes, but the cause lacked intentionality. The shape of the grand canyon was not chosen, rather - it was a consequence of the conditions being what the...

Not at all. We believe we have free will, because it seems like we do. How can we explain that, if determinism is true? It turns out that freely-wille...

The choice has been determined, and it was predictable - but only in principle. In principle, the shape of the grand canyon was predictable at the big...

Mirage? Compatibilism is the notion that our choices are indeed freely willed, because they are OUR choices: all the factors that influence the choice...

Determinism doesn't mean there is no free will, it means there is no Libertarian Free Will. Compatibilists account for a free will that is consistent ...

If you're referring to Quantum Mechanics, it's still (at least) probabilistic determinism - when there is quantum uncertainty.

The success of science. Empirical evidence shows the world to behave in regular, predictable ways, which supports the hypothesis that there are inviol...

While it's true that determinism can neither be proven nor disproven, I suggest that determinism should be the default assumption in the physical worl...

I'm fine as long as you're not claiming these seemingly random factors "prove" determinism is false. Whims, impulses, etc are just as consistent with ...

I agree, but what particular duties are entailed by this special responsibility?

Sorry. Sure, I make seemingly random choices. e.g. I lay in bed for some random number of minutes after the alarm goes off.

Rolling dice seems random, but we know the outcome is actually determined by the physical factors involved in the roll. Do you really think that there...

All of that is true REGARDLESS of whether or not we have libertarian free will. What factors lead to a decision BESIDES these things, if libertarian f...

Please contemplate how your decision making processes if you actually had free will. If the decision were important, you would try to think of all the...

Yes it does. We act in accordance with our beliefs, feelings, dispositions, desires, whims, etc. An act earns public praise or condemnation based on s...

I don't have a complete answer, but see my above response to Marchesk for a partial answer. The hard question is....HARD, no doubt. But Michael Tye at...

Yes.. See below. Here's Tye's basic answer (partly copied, partly paraphrased, from his book, "Consciousness Revisited"): 1. Red = physical property R...

I showed how qualia fit into a physicalist account (I did not originate this; I'm relating Michael Tye). I realize this isn't a complete account, but ...

We know too little about the workings of the brain to truly reconcile that. At this point, all we can do is entertain metaphysical accounts and consid...

I expected a response to that! It's a broader topic than qualia. If we can't agree on qualia, we won't get far in a discussion of mental life. It seem...

What do you mean by "reconciled"? The quale "green" is not ontologically identical to the scientific concept of green (e.g. the range of wavelengths),...

What I am addressing is the referrent: green is a word that refers to the experience of greenness (the quale). Like all qualia, it is subjective - so ...

Trinity is irrational in terms of the common understandings of persons: 3 persons = 1 person is logically impossible. Trinity is defended by creating ...

In fairness, Trump is capable of reading a teleprompter. In this case, we're told the teleprompter stopped working, so he had to rely on his personal ...

I suggest that there are non-verbal concepts, and this includes qualia like greenness. The "concept" of greenness is that mental image that we perceiv...

Suppose you went back in time and encountered your 2-year old self. Two distinct individuals standing side be side, with clear physical differences ca...

We perceive (have a subjective experience) of greenness, and having experienced it at least once, we then have a memory of greenness - a memory that i...

I think the "ghost" is an illusion of introspection. Rather, the representation of greenness is present because it influences behavior. Some of the mo...

I don't think it has much bearing on your argument. I offer it more for context, in case you get interested in Philosophy of Mind - where the distinct...

It seems to me the "ghost" may a product of conceptual problems that arise from (possibly misleading) introspection. It seems that my mind IS somethin...

You have some particular (unprovable) ontology in mind, and dismissing other possibilities because they are inconsistent with the (unprovable) assumpt...

There are two flavors of emergentism: ontological and epistemological. I think you're referring to epistemological emergence, since you're accepting t...

Reductionism could be an approach, but I've only seen it used as an ontological commitment- so from that perspective it is either consistent with real...

"Ex nihilo" = from nothing, implies a state of "nothingness" existed, a self-contradictory term ("nonexistence exists"). If x exists at all times, and...

If reductionism is true, then indeed it must work bottom up. That's not to say that scientific research should be directed toward (say) fully accounti...

Au contraire! Philosphers can be kinda funny: Rene Descartes goes up to the counter at Starbucks. “I’ll have a scone,” he says. “Would you like juice ...

It's bad logic. If the past is finite, then something existed without "coming into existence" because that would entail a state prior to its existence...

I agree with this, but would like to clarify that inner dialog is one aspect of HUMAN consciousness. Non-human animals (and non-verbal humans) probabl...

Why believe the fundamental stuff required a start in time? Your intuition about the need for a start is based on experience with configurations of th...

Matter and energy (which are interchangeable) are just configurations of fundamental stuff. The intuition (which is not a proof) is rooted in our expe...