seanie

Jonesy

The book's twaddle.

Sorry.

But it is.

Honest.

Primal

I don't agree with the idea of of us choosing our own meaning or giving our life meaning, because that presupposes free will. Who's to say we have a choice over whether something will be meaningful to us or not?

I think its more realistic to suppose that we inherit meaning, from our genes, enviroment, and culture just like we inherit language,values and for many of us; superstitions.

Kent Stevens

We have choice between different cultures. We can buy into Christainity, Islam, Sikhism, etc. As freethinkers we can buy into secular humanism, religious humanism, objectivism, pantheism, transhumanism, communism, etc.

There are alternatives open to most systems. The weather could be fine or wet next Saturday. This does not mean that the weather has mojo aka free will.

Unfortunately, we have not traditionally had the freedom of being anything else than a christian in a western society. But it is possible to have different beliefs from christianity these days and not be burnt at the stake for it.

Rusting Car Bumper

Free will is merely the experience of free will. The fact that the universe may be deterministic and even your thoughts are "predetermined" doesn't enter into it. I have free will simply because I have the experience of having choice between multiple options at times. Free will is defined by an experience you have. It is not defined by the state of external things.

This is a general problem of philosophy of mind. The descriptions of things are not the things themselves. That is, for any experience, if I have a description of that experience (for example if I knew what neurons to manipulate in the brain to experience the taste of an apple) if stil would not have any apriori knowledge if *I myself* was having that experience if I was, for example, to taste an apple. Analagously, arguing against free will in the manner you propose has essentially the same fault.

Further, your explanation regarding genes, environment, doesn't apply because, as I said, I don't even know the correct category of answer even if you were to present a possible answer to me.

DC

Primal

The whole issue of free will is centered on whether or not human actions are part of the causal universe and hence must be a certain way.

To define free will as the same thing as "experienced choice" is hence misleading as such a choice does not meet the requirements of interrhetorical paralell. That's like me defining bad air as germs and saying, well it looks like the Victorian were right all along. Or me defining "creationism" as the idea of animals evolving under natural selection. With all the baggage attached to the notion of free will and how it has always been derfined by libertarians using the term free will as something incompatible with determined actions, defining free will as mere experience seems misleading. The existence of experience was never contended by either side in the determinist/libertarian debates. The existence of free will was. Why do we need a radically different definition of free will, why can't we just scrap the concept given its religious/randomist origins?


Also your whole position is somewhat based on epiphenomenalism, a position I very much reject. Experiences are equivalent to neural activities.

In fact neuroscientists can now look at your brain activity and tell whether you are looking at a face or a place. It's only a matter of time before they find grandma in there. Computer chips hooked to a cat's brain have allowed one to put what a cat sees on a screen. Computers hooked up to a man have allowed a man to control the cursor via thinking. How could this be if the mind and brain were not one? If the mind was not physical then how could it manipulate a computer via physical neurons and microchips?

John Page

I saw a pretty butterfly
a seeking food and mates
but then it coughed
its leg fell off
and floated down the river.

Moral: Life seemingly has patterns for all of us, but a lot of random stuff also - which makes us wonder what it all means.

The learned philosopher thinks;
but knows not the answer's truth
for all his/her life is relative
and god is the only proof.

The learned philosopher ponders;
but knows not the cause of life's wonders
his/her meaning is reason's midwifery course
and one's being just makes it worse.

Moral: There is none.

Cheers, John

Polemic

The menaing of life is sex. Not the act but the picking up and dropping off of spurm. Thats where the life rubber meats the road.

Rusting Car Bumper

The comparison to creationism is just a rhetorical cheapshot.

We are discussing what freewill *is*. Freewill *is* the experience of having choices in the same way the taste of an apple *is* the experience of having some certain experience centered in the mouth.

I think that the argument against free will based on a causal universe does not address the problem of disconnect between explainations and the things themselves.

The second point in the previous e-mail has a complete mistake so forget that whole point.

DC

Polemic

I think that the argument against free will based on a causal universe does not address the problem of disconnect between explainations and the things themselves.

I would go further and would put the idea of free will in the area of being purely academic. Causal explainations of contingent properties, as any connection defined in science or reason, are true in case or kind only. Taken out of their ends all such arguements fall to do any work by way of ultimate explaination. So any connection drawn between things or "is"ings are drawn by us. We are interesting!

Kent Stevens

How about this for a new argument for god's existence.

God *is* the experience of having God in the same way the taste of an apple *is* the experience of having some certain experience centered in the mouth.

If something can be said to exist if it is experienced then Zeus, magic, and Santa Claus can be said to exist. Other imaginations of people such as the experience that someone is the ruler of the world, or that they were abducted by aliens, can also be said to be real if all you need is the experience of the thing concerned. Someone might think they have the imaginary property of mojo, but because it is "experienced" or rather imagined, mojo can be said to exist.