I am not convinced that we cannot use the concept of causation to good use. Nor do I see how substituting a "universal will" as a sort of first mover ...
Thanks! I have read all of those enough to recommend them. I haven't finished all of them cover to cover. I have a long reading list and get distracte...
Smallism is the claim that all facts about larger things are reducible to facts about small things (parts). QFT says that facts about the smallest thi...
Certainly. It's still the dominant view it would seem, although this is more by inertia than anything else. But if you look back to the 20th century i...
Yes and no. All groups help promote common metrics of well being. Religious association has a larger effect size than most though. But there are fairl...
I don't see how that's the case. It's maybe something more along the lines of Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics. It doesn't suppose any sort of f...
This just seems like Kantian subjective dualism with some linguistic turn language sprinkled in to me. I don't see how such a free floating language c...
IMHO, it's the prevalence of smallism in modern explanations of determinism. Old way of explaining determinism: the world follows the Principal of Suf...
Gotcha. Personally, I don't think freedom can be reduced to "the feeling of volition." At the very least, such a view would seem to require multiple d...
Sure, there is obviously some bracketing here. The "closed" sign on a store objectively means "the store isn't open for business," but that doesn't me...
This only seems to be a problem if we assume: A. "Uncaused" libertarian free will is the only type of freedom that can make justice coherent; and B. P...
Not sure what the relevance of this is. So what does have bearing on free will? Did the shift in Western culture that allowed women to start being edu...
Clearly. How do we find out that we are mislead? By other empirical observations. You have to trust some observations to conclude that you've been led...
I think there are definitely problems with the main ways of defining probability, particularly frequentism, but I don't think circularity is one of th...
I agree, it's asking for a contradiction. That's why libertarian free will makes no sense. The idea of "us" choosing in a way that is autonomous from ...
Ok, that still doesn't answer how such decisions are "mine" in they aren't determined by my rationality, beliefs, desires, instincts, etc? What exactl...
This is a statement of the position known as "incompatibilism." "If things are determined, then there is no freedom." Claiming that we universally "kn...
Basically, what I was pointing to is how cognitive science, neuroscience, etc. look at "explaining experience" on a basic level. Consider the experien...
In his "History of Theology," lectures for the Great Courses, the philosopher Phil Cary points out that today, in the shadow of the Holocaust, we tend...
So, what determines the "free part" of the decision making process? If it's nothing, then it's random. If it's us, then it seems like our choices are ...
But that was exactly the response to people first positing that the Earth is spinning: "it doesn't seem like it's spinning." It doesn't appear that wa...
Well that and trying to turn language into sense data by claiming that: "the meaning of a sentence is the empirical data that would verify (or falsify...
So what we know doesn't determine our actions at all? Then why does everyone choose to get up when the fire alarm goes off? If information didn't dete...
A rather famous quote on this problem: The biggest knock against Popper's theory I can think of is that it has been invoked so many times to call area...
Seems to be the case to me. When a fire alarm goes off, everyone stands up and exits the room. The alarm seems to play an important causal role there....
In my experience, historical surveys have only limited value. They are good for understanding intellectual history, less so for understanding philosop...
I'm not sure how this is the case. If I am manipulated, brainwashed by propaganda say, then it seems my actions can absolutely be determined by that. ...
How does this work? We can have a universal definition of "life" right? But life is tied to the being of living organisms. Or a universal definition o...
Lots of things in the sciences lack a tangible "body" and contain subjective elements. However, we still think we can meaningfully measure them. For e...
That's a fair point. The consideration for an individual is different than that of the policymaker. Slightly related point: freezing the sale of new a...
Plato uses the "stick in water" example because it's an obvious example of sight not matching reality. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GALLMJxLvgA/sddefault.jp...
There is an important bit of nuance here; Hume absolutely did think that we couldn't justify induction without reference to induction. He does appear ...
The closest real example to the sort of thing you're talking about that comes to mind is Parmenides' denial of the reality of change. However, it seem...
But what about situations where we have been manipulated? In those cases, it seems like we are making a free choice at the time, but we come to find o...
Sure. But firearms also make committing murder much easier, so you also will get homicides that wouldn't have occured without the guns. You get two of...
Gotcha, I see what you're saying now. That makes sense to me. I certainly think you're on to something here. There is a sense in which "the type of pe...
Sure. But this is true of embracing liberal/conservative policy positions in many enviornments as well. It's also true re idealism vs physicalism. My ...
I agree that it lacked some common elements of organized religion. It did have a practical side focused on "inwards and upwards meditation/contemplati...
Neoplatonism? Saint Aquinas has the model of the "two winged bird," faith and reason. The above holds for "that which is known through reason." This c...
Agreed. This ties into (selective) awareness. Support for Israel is top of mind in part due to the powerful Arab reactions against it (e.g., the oil e...
Absolutely. It's an even larger issue in theology. I would just add that another element of the problem is the fact that people conflate determinism w...
It seems relevant to the Israeli argument re antisemitism. The question is: - Given that there has been no shortage of wars in the region in the past ...
No it isn't. The first is a term about sexual attraction, the second is about belief in God. E.g., the Oxford definition: What would your definition b...
This phenomena goes both ways. Plenty of people subscribe to some form of secular, atheist belief, having never really examined it or competing system...
I find the focus on fundamentalists very common in critiques of religion. They are, in ways, a ready built, real life strawman. But Saint Aquinas was ...
This is an excellent point. It used to be that people looking for spiritual truths would abandon everything they had to live with some great teacher. ...
"Mechanism," was view that all phenomena reduces to stuff bumping into other stuff, a view popularized by Galileo. It's true that Newton's findings re...
:up: It seems to me like plenty in physics, the life sciences, and complexity sciences are willing to take a broader view. The strong hold of the old ...
I would note that in the first paragraph quoted you are looking at small parts of a person. I think most of our discomfort with "determinism" and "mec...
Right, it's a conflict between rights, namely a right to self-defense and a right not to be shot. The position is also often that criminals simply won...
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