The case where the ball stays at rest on the apex during a finite time interval merely constitutes a subset of the set of the trajectories in phase sp...
If the expanded law is allowed to remain silent for the specific set of states of the system whereby its trajectory in phase space aims precisely at t...
Notice, though, that this proposed expansion only shaves off 'branching outs' from bifurcation point towards the future. Determinism is commonly defin...
Sorry. I got confused. (Can you imagine that I have an undergraduate degree in mathematical physics?) I was thinking of Newton's second law (F = dp/dt...
You were implying that whoever defends an incompatibilist version of free will (such that it requires indeterminism) ought to acknowledge that what th...
The question whether QM is fundamentally indeterministic at a fundamental level isn't really relevant to appraising responses to the luck objection to...
Thanks. It indeed appears to be a good place to start with Kane's theory of ultimate responsibility and SFAs ("self forming actions"), in order to lea...
Sure, but who does that? Tell me what paper you're reading first. I'm not an advocate of Kane's libertarian conception of free will, myself, but as I'...
I think your construal of the first law might be too strong, or too literal, and may make it inconsistent with the second law. This first law often is...
Yes, I wasn't picturing the ball to keep on going to the other side. Rather, it reaches a bifurcation point in phase space. It is equally physically p...
Well, what is 'concealed' (or worth paying attention to) is the discontinuity in the jounce. But I am usure that this discontinuity can be construed a...
That's interesting. I hadn't thought about the implications of that. But I am unsure about the implications that it has for symmetry breaking understo...
That's strange. I would have thought assigning causality to relevant agents, events, or states of affairs, is quite productive (pragmatically) wheneve...
The idea that lack of causal determination of actions (by laws of nature and prior events and/or states of affair) entails mere randomness is generall...
I rather like the idea of a generic cause of the symmetry breaking mechanism. The generic cause, in this case, is the (practically inobservable) fluct...
Have you looked at the paper linked to in the OP, though? The case has been specially contrived such that even if the ball is placed exactly at the ap...
Not really, because it assumes metaphysical realism: the idea that there might conceivably be an external God's eye view of the world that amounts to ...
That's fairly intuitive, right? Yet, the mathematical analysis of the case contradicts this intuition. Look at the equation of motion of the ball bear...
I don't quite see how one can consistently hold that view. If there is some generic end that you want to achieve, but that you can achieve in a variet...
No so. What you are saying would be true for any number of smooth convex domes, including spherical domes. But the particular shape being discussed in...
Not so, as I've already explained to Bitter. The shape of the dome is such that, as the ball is getting infinitesimally close to the apex, the second ...
That's because of a specific queer mathematical property of the shape of the dome and how the system interacts with the vertical force of gravity. At ...
What's interesting about the dome is that the ball's starting from rest, and, after a finite time, rolling in an arbitrary direction, is a valid solut...
If there are credible claims by people who knew Ford and Kavanaugh that both of them lied under oath, they should both be held accountable for their l...
Their move is certainly effective. In the wake of the news of the tight grip that the White House is determined to exert on the investigation, the sha...
'Half-assed' is an understatement. It will be hundredth-assed. The scope of the investigation is defined by the White House while "White House counsel...
You are assuming that they locked the door to prevent her from escaping. They may have locked the door so that nobody would walk in on them unexpected...
That's interesting. But this article doesn't make clear if there is anything about Kavanaugh that could lead us to expect that he would decide such as...
Would that be a case where Trump doesn't necessarily need that it be Kavanaugh specifically, but he needs that a fifth conservative seat be filled ASA...
Maybe the Republicans don't mind so much if it isn't Kavanaugh who gets the seat. But Trump minds very much since Kavanaugh is the only one who assert...
When he was pressed on this issue, he and the other Republicans appeared almost schizophrenic. On the one hand, they were arguing that the Senate hand...
The American Bar Association is now calling for the nomination process to be put on hold, and for the FBI to investigate. And Alan Dershowitz, of all ...
Neither had I, regarding the "devils triangle" thing. I heard of it when it was reported that the Wikipedia disambiguation page for this unusual phras...
Something I've noticed, which may not be very significant but nevertheless is interesting: When asked about the "devil's triangle" mentioned in his ca...
Here is the exchange that I mentioned above, between Grassley and Feinstein (and later, Cornyn) regarding the leaks and the Republican conspiracy theo...
I think Ford might agree with you but Kavanaugh wouldn't. It's conceivable that things happened roughly as Ford remembers them and Kavanaugh was too d...
It could be read both ways. He may be signaling to Kavanaugh that his forthcoming "no" vote is a prudent statement of uncertainty rather than an indic...
Yes. Grassley was attempting to corner Feinstein, asking her how it might be possible that the press got a hold of the confidential letter if Feinstei...
Over the last few hours the Republican Senators have been hammering the point that the Democrats who call for an FBI investigation are dishonest and h...
I'm doing what I can to separate the wheat from the shaff. @"Aaron R" attempted this also in a thread on scholasticism a little while ago. Any kind of...
I agree that the thinness of the disembodied subject, or of the rational soul, is a big part of the problem. On the Aristotelian conception of agency,...
Old bad ideas die off and newer equally bad ideas take hold. What is becoming fashionable nowadays is to claim that autonomous rational agency and res...
Yes, I think the third-rate literature that @"StreetlightX" deplores, because of the confused ways in which it problematizes 'the freedom of the will'...
I find it useful to speak of the will and of the intellect as distinct faculties albeit ones that a rational animal can only possess conjointly. Those...
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