You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

A Christian Philosophy

Comments

There are only 2 types of justifications or causes: efficient cause (what causes the effect), and final cause (the end goal or intention). If you excl...
September 05, 2021 at 16:59
Hello. I'd say not necessarily. Justifying means "having a good reason", and we can have a good reason without having free will. E.g. killing someone ...
September 03, 2021 at 21:16
Hello. Free will means that our intentions are partially free from the laws of physics (I say partially because we may not have free will when we are ...
September 03, 2021 at 20:29
Hello. We distinguish between 2 types of good and evil: external (sometimes also called physical) and moral. External good and evil are ones that come...
September 03, 2021 at 20:16
Hello. This is an interesting post, but there seems to be a lot of different topics here. What is your main point? If it is about whether things can e...
August 31, 2021 at 17:09
Hello. Premises: P1: Some acts are good, e.g. honesty and saving lives, and some are evil, e.g. lying and killing. P2: Some good acts are better than ...
August 31, 2021 at 16:16
In your view, what is the lowest form of being that is conscious? Is a rock conscious? If not, then the point remains: science says that rocks are old...
August 14, 2021 at 19:05
Hello. Does reality require an observer? If by observer we mean a human being, and we believe in science that the universe is much older than the huma...
August 14, 2021 at 17:29
So 'probable' is 'plausible' but with numbers involved. Note that, as described previously, it seems that Michael's description of induction is not co...
December 11, 2020 at 16:56
Hello. That is indeed one of the descriptions I found, as described in the OP. But 2 things to notice. (1) This description of induction is not compat...
December 11, 2020 at 16:36
Thanks anyways!
December 11, 2020 at 16:14
So it seems the distinction is merely in the chronological order of experience. Abduction is an explanation based on past experience, whereas inductio...
December 11, 2020 at 03:36
This distinction is in the function but not in the act. It seems to me that both are IBE, which is used both to build the hypothesis and to test it ag...
December 10, 2020 at 17:00
I accept that claim. Thanks. But now, how is induction different from abduction? Upon observing a black swan, the only reasoning needed at that point ...
December 10, 2020 at 04:33
If some swans are black, the explication that necessarily follows is that the hypothesis "all swans are white" is false. So we falsify the hypothesis ...
December 09, 2020 at 21:31
I get how each step of the example is categorized in the type of reasoning as you have defined them, but I still don't understand the distinction betw...
December 09, 2020 at 18:22
Hello. Could you give a specific example of your general description? I fail to see why the verification of the hypothesis by experiments should not s...
December 09, 2020 at 15:37
Hello. I agree with your view on abduction. Could you give a specific example of induction? I suspect any instance would fall under either abduction i...
December 08, 2020 at 18:24
The key is the word "rational". If a person chooses the path of reason 100% of the time, then you are correct that any change in decision, even freely...
July 14, 2020 at 02:50
I'm with you on that one. "Knowledge" is "justified true belief". I don't think someone truly knows what they are talking about if they cannot justify...
July 14, 2020 at 02:27
I agree that if revisiting a past event as a spectator, we would expect the exact same outcome for that event every time; but note that this expectati...
July 09, 2020 at 03:03
Interesting theory. But I wonder if it merely pushes the problem one more step, instead of explaining it. A condition to accept a property as being ph...
July 09, 2020 at 02:45
What I am getting out of your claim is that the will has the possibility of choosing; but also does not because it will always choose the same decisio...
July 05, 2020 at 02:47
Hello. Are you saying that things are determined prior to the biological state, and then not necessarily determined after that? But then if not for an...
July 05, 2020 at 02:27
It's a matter of definitions. If randomness was defined as "not determined" or "Cause A does not always give Effect B", then there would only be 2 cat...
July 05, 2020 at 02:22
Indeed, entropy increases. But as previously mentioned, things can change into different things if both supervene on a same basic thing. E.g. squares ...
June 30, 2020 at 03:44
Of course, factors like the circumstance, our appetite, and our reason, all influence the will towards a decision; but they cannot compel the will to ...
June 30, 2020 at 02:44
"Free Will: The will has the ability to choose between multiple effects." Reason allows to determine which outcome is best, but free will allows to ch...
June 27, 2020 at 02:39
As previously stated, energy in a simple closed system with nothing else cannot increase. But a change to the system can serve to explain the change i...
June 27, 2020 at 02:30
But if all the circumstances are deterministic, including our values, then why claim that we have free will at all?
June 23, 2020 at 03:53
Regarding the Slot Machine Theory in general. Not gonna lie, I still don't see your view on it being unfalsifiable; but it's not that important becaus...
June 23, 2020 at 03:50
Sorry, I'm a bit late in responding to these posts. I'll get to them tomorrow.
June 21, 2020 at 23:33
I agree that if humans were always willing to obey their voice of reason, then they would act in a determined way, called Intellectual Determinism, an...
June 19, 2020 at 03:07
In general, can you define your acronyms before using them? I take it SMT means Slot Machine Theory. But all 3 types are expected to pay off soon; so ...
June 19, 2020 at 02:52
I'm not fully understanding your point. That said, given the first definition of free will you wrote, do you still think that it is compatible with de...
June 18, 2020 at 02:10
Hello. Sounds good to me. I forget the reasons brought forth by Forest; but aren't free will and determinism contradictory by definition? Determinism:...
June 16, 2020 at 04:03
I think the theory is false. It seems to commit the Gambler's fallacy. You can also disprove it statistically by playing it a large amount of time, or...
June 16, 2020 at 03:55
They are not incompatible. Picture the good and bad angels on each side of a person's shoulders like here. There are two influences, and the will can ...
June 16, 2020 at 02:36
Hello. I think you are referring to "Intellectual Determinism", which holds that the human will necessarily acts on the mind's judgment that something...
June 13, 2020 at 02:59
I don't understand your objection. Mathematical claims demand sufficient explanations like any other claims. Explanations don't always need to be proo...
June 13, 2020 at 02:47
Sure, provability is an example of justification; but not the only one. And one field of mathematics that is relevant to causality is statistics, whic...
June 11, 2020 at 02:57
Hello. An opinion does not count as an argument or a refutation.
June 08, 2020 at 03:07
Pure mathematics is in the domain of identity, not causality. E.g. 2+2=4 means that 2+2 is identical to 4, not that 2+2 causes 4. PoSR is in the domai...
June 08, 2020 at 03:06
Probability. Reasonableness is equivalent to probability in mathematics without being quantitative. Note however, that the PoSR applies first and fore...
June 07, 2020 at 02:29
First, bear with me when using symbolic logic, because I am not familiar with these. Now the term "proof" is too strict. A reason that yields reasonab...
June 05, 2020 at 03:07
Greater in terms of "causal power" or "ability". This is still quite generic, so I'll give examples. Indeed if talking about energy events, then the e...
June 02, 2020 at 03:29
Thanks! Will check it out.
June 01, 2020 at 17:24
Not in the context of the PoSR; which is what matters for this post. To confirm, in the statement about the PoSR "For every event E, if E occurs, then...
May 31, 2020 at 03:26
But if a claim does not need to but can be demonstrated, then it means it could be demonstrated without begging the question, which the statement in t...
May 30, 2020 at 04:12
From the same link: "In informal speech, self-evident often merely means obvious, but the epistemological definition is more strict." And also "A logi...
May 28, 2020 at 04:36