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Olivier5

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Fair enough but it's still a mind experiment, so there is no harm in assuming the two brains absolutely identical in every way at start.
October 10, 2020 at 06:02
Freedom My teacher told me one day about something called freedom I asked the teacher to kindly speak Arabic Is freedom a Greek word for some historic...
October 09, 2020 at 19:43
June is on the run For so long Pushed and pulled then shunned It was so wrong These four walls crashing in Won't stop me now Cause I'm alive I'm out t...
October 09, 2020 at 17:11
Beg you pardon? Edit: irie /???ri?/ adjective (chiefly in Jamaican English) nice, good, or pleasing (used as a general term of approval). "the place i...
October 09, 2020 at 16:51
I think we should leave a room for fair competition. Eg in business or sports, when you're trying to win but in a fair way.
October 09, 2020 at 15:14
Hats off.
October 09, 2020 at 10:14
I am sympathetic to the broad thrust of your argument but find this particular premise a bit shaky. One could posit that the brains of two identical t...
October 09, 2020 at 09:57
Here is the story of Layla and Majnun - an Arab pre-Islamic tale of love and solitude. Very contemplative music. I gather that it's an old poem that S...
October 09, 2020 at 08:26
Old pirates, yes, they rob I Sold I to the merchant ships Minutes after they took I From the bottomless pit But my hands was made strong By the hand o...
October 09, 2020 at 08:16
Maybe you get cross just because your braincells determine you to be cross... I'm trying to be really charitable here, Isaac style, by thinking of you...
October 09, 2020 at 07:35
Indeed I know better than that, and you don't even know what you mean...
October 09, 2020 at 07:21
Meaning is not a thing, huh? I guess it's a nothing then, which is true in the specific case of people who make a lot of noise with their mouth to say...
October 09, 2020 at 07:13
Nope. In the previous lines you argued they aren't, that they differ in their 'fine structure'. I imagine that if I had to share limbs with my brother...
October 09, 2020 at 06:58
And hence communication is impossible... :joke:
October 09, 2020 at 06:48
Yes, there could be many purposes to philosophy, as also pointed by Mo. Often we search in philosophy some ways to work on our weaknesses: to reassure...
October 08, 2020 at 21:30
Yes, and that is the key take away message for me: whether one adopts a determinist or an indeterminist outlook doesn't change the problem of freedom ...
October 08, 2020 at 18:22
Indeed. It's noticeable in many ways, one of my pet topics being the symbolic use of public space and monuments. All the Washington DC highlights (sen...
October 08, 2020 at 16:27
Maybe that's because you are predetermined not to see a logical issue here.
October 08, 2020 at 14:59
We are our mental states, own them, identify with them. And so whatever degree of freedom we have is just a part of our mental state's ways of working...
October 08, 2020 at 12:47
Well, Echarmion put the same idea much better than I could, so let's use his characterisation: I don't think this is a proven fact. Pretty large molec...
October 08, 2020 at 11:25
That is the definition of causality, not determinism. Maybe we should try and define what we are talking about a bit better. My understanding is that ...
October 08, 2020 at 07:57
You're completely crazy. I never said anything like that. Edit: Also you are being unfair and unjust, accusing a random stranger (me) of wanting to pu...
October 07, 2020 at 21:44
Sorry, I don't understand.
October 07, 2020 at 20:41
No, I didn't.
October 07, 2020 at 20:31
The important point to realize is that neither determinism nor indeterminist can ever be proven true or false, as they are statements about the ultima...
October 07, 2020 at 20:11
Is this sort of passive aggressiveness par for the course around here? FYI, I do work with all sorts of people, including people poorer than you can e...
October 07, 2020 at 18:47
No, just because he understood that he needed the structures, the laws, the culture of the empire to rule it. A certain social capital is necessary to...
October 07, 2020 at 18:18
In retrospect, I think you are right that determinism is neither here nor there in the issue of moral responsibility and free will. It's largely a dis...
October 07, 2020 at 17:10
In: Platonism  — view comment
In good cartesian fashion, if ideas are not real, I wonder what is real... Objects around us? We only know of them through our ideas of them.
October 07, 2020 at 14:38
Sorry about that. I think we covered a lot of ground but it's related to free will in a vague way...
October 07, 2020 at 13:56
Yours is a pre-kantian argument about the true essence and nature of things. It may be good metaphysics for demons and for risk-adverse folks, but it ...
October 07, 2020 at 09:47
The fact remains that people were trying to reconstruct the Western empire long after it was gone, that there was quite some nostalgia for it during t...
October 07, 2020 at 08:27
What part of did you fail to understand?
October 07, 2020 at 08:10
I'm trying to stick to simple ideas because you are easily confused. Just saying that stochastic phenomena look like a duck.
October 07, 2020 at 07:49
The article is beyond my pay grade. You keep misunderstanding extremely simple points. Let me rephrase one more time: When I see a phenomenon that dis...
October 07, 2020 at 07:37
I'm not really insisting that, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. I'm just saying that this is the ...
October 07, 2020 at 06:48
In: Books  — view comment
I read less and less, but always hard copies. I like the physical thing in my hand. I like to ‘harm’ it, too. To fold pages, to let rain or coffee spo...
October 07, 2020 at 05:23
I can do so very easily. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.... Why would I not infer that it's a duck?
October 07, 2020 at 04:09
And they are also used for all sorts of calculations about random events. Double whammy. It wasn't enough one way?
October 06, 2020 at 21:11
Stochastic Having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. Well, that's wha...
October 06, 2020 at 21:09
Yes, the use of probabilities in thermodynamics, biology, chemistry and many other sciences could be down to measurement errors, chaotic systems, accu...
October 06, 2020 at 20:52
You seem to take a tiny amount of certainty and make it absolute. . In the case of the neuroscientist predicting what he will think tomorrow, the impo...
October 06, 2020 at 20:50
I think this is demonstrably not true, but if you can prove that the lottery is behaving deterministically, you could earn millions...
October 06, 2020 at 19:57
But it's dependent on knowing the laws of the universe, which is equally esoteric. Now I'm curious, do expound. It's non local, in particular. Which m...
October 06, 2020 at 19:35
I'm saying the techniques they use are fit for apprehending a reality that is not fully determined. These sciences don't assume full determination. On...
October 06, 2020 at 16:12
Maybe there's a QM specialist on this site who could clear that up?
October 06, 2020 at 15:53
And yet neither thermodynamics, nor chemistry nor biology are deterministic in nature. They all use probabilities to make predictions. Something does ...
October 06, 2020 at 15:19
Exactly, and hence determinism is a rather esoteric idea. And likewise, you don't like the idea of randomness and you try to erase it from your POV, w...
October 06, 2020 at 14:46
What is not compelling to me is the story that, if the universe was to magically rewind at the time of the Big Bang and unfold again, every single thi...
October 06, 2020 at 11:44
Indeterminism says that some things are predetermined to a degree, but not necessarily everything and not necessarily to a perfect degree. We can make...
October 06, 2020 at 11:34