FreeEmotion

I think what I am really getting at is: is a purely Newtonian universe possible, with all relativity being Galilean Relativity. Could God create such ...

As purely philosophical question, would God be able to define an absolute frame of reference, say the centre of the known (to Him) universe, and all t...

Thank you for the corrections. First this, though: Imagine, if there was a God, or an "Intelligence" that knew everything, and whose knowledge is not ...

I might also add that the Lorentz transformation is used to preserve the laws of physics when translating any event from a moving frame to a non movin...

Well if it turns out that we 'really" do not have free will, then the moment that is announced by scientists we will say "ah well" and move on, contin...

Let's move on to mutual time dilation. It is often said that moving clocks run slow. This may be a misleading statement, or at the least, incomplete. ...

This situation is equivalent to the spaceship sending out particles at the speed of light throughout its journey. The ship takes 13 months to travel h...

There are only certain groups labelled terrorists and they do not like it. Ever heard a terrorist admit being a terrorist?

If they were not dumb, not unreasonable and did negotiate I guess they would be in politics?

Thank you. But this is interesting.. You are saying that you may see a spaceship passing a star a light year away, the spaceship travelling directly t...

So is it correct to say that an observer can see two objects approaching each other at a speed > c? For example if one object is travelling at 0.7c an...

The issue lies with the 'ray of light' term, that is, I can accept for the moment the assumption that light is measured at speed c by all observers. I...

I agree with you. "One thing to note is that terrorism is largely born of failure". In a sense, all violence is born of failure, it's not hard to unde...

We have fulfilled the dreams of our futurists and the nightmares of our prophets. How well each person does in life is a personal thing, we may travel...

To me, free will something we feel we have. Whether we actually are determining the course of a nonexistent future or discovering the scenery on a set...

There's a chart of terrorist acts here: Are terrorists insane? If they are not, then maybe one should reduce the motivating factors, is there a terror...

If the world has progressed, then what it has progressed to is hopefully not the end point, I hope the present state of the world is not the pinnacle ...

The link you mentioned has this interesting idea ""the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". I am not sure how it impacts the free will / de...

OK, so like a tree growing leaves and branches to where there was nothing before. Is the Dao then all knowing or timeless, or outside of time?

So the question is, is this predetermined (according to Daoism?)

If was not familiar with the philosophy community, however I was really happy to listen in on this discussion. To answer deep philosophical questions ...

BBC discussion covers a lot of ground: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z

I am not sure if there is a distinction between the future being 'laid out' and unknowable to us human beings, and a future that is not already pre-de...

Are these the possible chains of causation we are discussing? Just to clarify. a) (Beginning?) Unknowable quantum event > Unknowable quantum event > (...

OK, say I agree to this: I see what you mean. It is not out of the question for robots to assign responsibilities to themselves. However, assuming the...

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/taxonomy.html

I find this line of reasoning somewhat puzzling. I sometimes use the device of thought experiment in the form of 'if there were an universe where.." t...

Indeed. These are importance questions. I sense however, a great deal of intellectual nervousness about discussing the topic of determinism without an...

"Free will is ontological freedom in conjunction with will phenomena." I am not sure I understand this concept.

One can be a physicalist and a free will advocate? OK. Not subscribing to the view that physical things operate as "clockwork". Well you may not subsc...

I'm glad we agree on this. Of course there are the simplifications and errors that you pointed out, however for my purposes it served me quite well. T...

There is what seems to be an excellent explanation on the Free will determinism debate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGtkDzELAI I understand ...

Let's see a definition of free will and how it relates to determinism: http://www.ditext.com/runes/f.html

Just for reference, let me paste here my maze scenarios: You said

There is nothing to say that a person cannot freely choose a predetermined path. Even in the case of a biological machine-brain, there is nothing to s...

Website on free will with links.

I think I see what you are getting at. Let's compare life to a maze. To me, I am walking through the maze, constrained by the walls, at the same time ...

I believe there is a concrete example given above, the example with the two doors - in that case, what would the 'real possibilities' be? Is that a go...

So what would these options be and what would this look like?

I am not sure what is meant by "choice" here - does the act of choosing mean the mental act of thinking and weighting options? If that is what it mean...

Interesting test of lecture by Stephen Hawking: http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html

I am beginning to see the light here while reading the Wikipedia article on Free Will. Different things are meant by free will and even by determinism...

I understand your point perfectly. I can work within such a view, though I it's a tricky area to explore, does anything happen outside my consciousnes...

What I meant was that there it was not necessary to imagine a universe devoid of humans but we could do with imagining (hypothizing?) a part of the un...

Paper : http://www.academia.edu/4309985/Epicurus_refutation_of_determinism

I understand the idea of quantum mechanics "God playing dice with the universe". The statement by Einstein has had many interpretations, I am sure, bu...

Thanks for all the replies - five pages of replies or more since I asked the question! I have briefly run through the answers. It's difficult to deal ...