 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| What is your position on the issue of free will? |
| Hard Determinist |
|
12% |
[ 1 ] |
| Compatibilist |
|
0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Metaphysical Libertarian |
|
0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Hard Indeterminist |
|
0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Who cares? |
|
87% |
[ 7 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 8 |
|
| Author |
Message |
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
|
|
|
 |
Kingswood
//
Joined: 05 May 2007
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
| David wrote: | I've taken a stab at doing a video blog on the topic of free will and empathy. Hope some of you find it interesting/comprehensible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oAKwv1qlj0
I really never wanted to become one of those people, but it's too late now. |
some comments after viewing from facebook
- your voice way too low; couldnt hear a lot of parts, so skipped through
- you read the whole thing off text? (i ask because i just admitted i skipped through large parts).. i wouldnt recommend that, i'm not saying you need to be this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vXv5y0UfP4
but it would certainly help if you were more lively
good luck
oh and brush your hair  |
|
|
|
|
David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Thanks Kingswood. Yeah, I may have to re-record it. It's a bad sign when even I can't hear what I'm saying! As Lola was saying, my 'radio' voice is much better than my 'David' voice for this sort of stuff.
I am reading off a script, but I think that's what works for me. I'm not good at memorising stuff (even though I know this argument well).
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I'm highly sceptical about this sort of stuff. For one thing, the concept of a 'soul' is highly esoteric and not particularly scientific; it makes sense that a quantum explanation would appeal to the 'What the Bleep Do We Know?' pseudoscience crowd. There's a fine line between that and a spot on the Oprah Winfrey show.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
I disagree on the not so scientific. There's a quote I read once 'Magic is just undiscovered science"
Who's to say that a lot of the modern theories about all this stuff won't be considered laughable in another 100 years.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| You don't say. |
|
|
|
|
Pa Marmo
Side by Side
Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Location: Nicks BB member #617
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Oh My Goodness.
_________________
Genesis 1:1 |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Dude! Your Goodness? |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: | |
|
[quote="David"]Here's a great lecture on free will. So far, this is more or less my view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk[/quote
Nuh.
lasted 10 minutes in. Pop science bullshit, following the age old scientific theory of "we can't explain it therefore it doesn't exist",
You can believe what your lack of free will makes you believe, considering you are someone who has upended their own belief system over the last 10 years and now believe different things to what was ingrained in you as a child.
I choose to believe I am able to make choices and exercise my own judgement and I am responsible for those choices. I can't just fob off accountability by claiming brain chemistry or the fact that it was predetermined that I was going to make that decision so it's not my fault.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
Pa Marmo
Side by Side
Joined: 16 Jun 2003
Location: Nicks BB member #617
|
| Post subject: | |
|
[quote="stui magpie"] | David wrote: | Here's a great lecture on free will. So far, this is more or less my view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk[/quote
Nuh.
lasted 10 minutes in. Pop science bullshit, following the age old scientific theory of "we can't explain it therefore it doesn't exist",
You can believe what your lack of free will makes you believe, considering you are someone who has upended their own belief system over the last 10 years and now believe different things to what was ingrained in you as a child.
I choose to believe I am able to make choices and exercise my own judgement and I am responsible for those choices. I can't just fob off accountability by claiming brain chemistry or the fact that it was predetermined that I was going to make that decision so it's not my fault. |
Fantastic post Stui, I will be using most of that at some time no doubt.
_________________
Genesis 1:1 |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: |
Nuh.
lasted 10 minutes in. Pop science bullshit, following the age old scientific theory of "we can't explain it therefore it doesn't exist",
You can believe what your lack of free will makes you believe, considering you are someone who has upended their own belief system over the last 10 years and now believe different things to what was ingrained in you as a child.
I choose to believe I am able to make choices and exercise my own judgement and I am responsible for those choices. I can't just fob off accountability by claiming brain chemistry or the fact that it was predetermined that I was going to make that decision so it's not my fault. |
I probably would have recommended sticking around for more than 10 minutes, but even so I would have thought you'd seen enough to know that that's not really his argument (i.e. "we can't explain it therefore it doesn't exist"). Harris actually gives some excellent explanations as to why we think we have free will and how the process of thought and decision-making works (see his 'choosing a film' analogy which you may or may not have reached). You complain that it's 'pop science', but what did you want me to link to, some verbose academic dissertation on the topic? If anything, I applaud Harris for posing this debate in simple, accessible terms that anyone can understand and consider.
On your second paragraph, Harris makes a great point about this idea of personality change later on in his talk. As he says, not having free will has nothing to do with whether or not you can or will radically change your personality; in fact, as he asserts (and I paraphrase) "you are not the same person you were 5 minutes ago, let alone 10 years ago". What he means by this, I think, is that we are in a state of constant flux as we gain good and bad experiences, further our understanding of the world, develop bad habits, succumb to the ageing process and so on.
Anyway, it's true that we both have biases on this topic. Belief in free will is something you obviously hold dearly, and belief in determinism has been a central tenet of my understanding of the world since I was a teenager. I don't think that should stop either of us from seeking out alternative views; so please, if you can find an accessible, compelling argument for free will on youtube (or in print form) that you think might challenge my views, post it here and I'll give it a look. Likewise, if the topic interests you at all, give Harris a bit more of a chance — his talk only goes for about 45 minutes in total and gets quite engaging.
Regardless, feel free to throw anything at me in the meantime. I'm always happy to confront opposing viewpoints; it's one of the joys of philosophy! 
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Pa Marmo wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | Here's a great lecture on free will. So far, this is more or less my view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk[/quote
Nuh.
lasted 10 minutes in. Pop science bullshit, following the age old scientific theory of "we can't explain it therefore it doesn't exist",
You can believe what your lack of free will makes you believe, considering you are someone who has upended their own belief system over the last 10 years and now believe different things to what was ingrained in you as a child.
I choose to believe I am able to make choices and exercise my own judgement and I am responsible for those choices. I can't just fob off accountability by claiming brain chemistry or the fact that it was predetermined that I was going to make that decision so it's not my fault. |
Fantastic post Stui, I will be using most of that at some time no doubt. |
|
Oh for goodness' sake; grow up. Appealing to mystery is defensive folk nonsense. Not because we know everything or even much at all (that's just another dumb red herring), but because what we assume to already know, or at least find useful to assume we know, is based on the same set of logics, reasoning processes and assumptions which sometimes drive us to conclusions which are challenging.
History, as useless as the subject is in this context, is littered with as many paranoid errors of anti-science rejectionism as it is with over-excited positivistic "we can measure and know" claims.
And we've seen this particular paranoid reaction repeatedly before; first, the Copernican Revolution was going to be the death of morality by relegating humanity to the outer rim of the universe; then, humanism was going to unleash chaos by eliminating the moral guidance of Popes and churches; after that, evolution was going to do away with human goodness by reducing us to mere beasts of the field; sometime later, "relativism" was going to corrode the very foundations of modern civilisation with its claims of the moral equality of hunter-gatherers and Asians and women and migrants; and now, cognitive science with its inability to locate the Miraculous Choice Machine in our brains and its stubborn adherence to cause and effect logic is going to turn us into choiceless zombies free of moral constraint and the compulsion to take responsibility for anything.
The difference between scientific commitment, flaws and all, and dumb folk religion, in all its destructive cringeworthiness, is that the former attempts to deal honestly with what is in front of it regardless of perceived challenging implications, while the latter panics at the thought of challenging implications and distorts or suppresses what is in front of it, clinging to the great breast of heavenly mysteries instead.
_________________
In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ I may have posted this here before, but I found the analogy on free will offered by Greene and Cohen really useful:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf
| Quote: | | modern physics tells us that space is curved. Nevertheless, it may be impossible for us to see the world as anything other than flatly Euclidean in our day-to-day lives. And there are, no doubt, deep evolutionary explanations for our Euclidean tendencies. Does it then follow that we are forever bound by our innate Euclidean psychology? The answer depends on the domain of life in question. In navigating the aisles of the grocery store, an intuitive, Euclidean representation of space is not only adequate, but probably inevitable. However, when we are, for example, planning the launch of a spacecraft, we can and should make use of relativistic physical principles that are less intuitive but more accurate. In other words, a Euclidean perspective is not necessary for all practical purposes, and the same may be true for our implicit commitment to free will and retributivism. For most day-to-day purposes it may be pointless or impossible to view ourselves or others in this detached sort of way. But—and this is the crucial point—it may not be pointless or impossible to adopt this perspective when one is deciding what the criminal law should be or whether a given defendant should be put to death for his crimes. These may be special situations, analogous to those routinely encountered by ‘rocket scientists’, in which the counter-intuitive truth that we legitimately ignore most of the time can and should be acknowledged |
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ An excellent little rant there, Pietilidie, to enliven a dud thread which should have been strangled at birth. Of all the ridiculous, sterile, pointless things otherwise intelligent people could waste time arguing about, free will vs determinism would have to rank second only to the relative ability of two groups of sweaty, smelly men to bash an oblate spheroid of inflated animal skin up and down an approximately circular area through perpendicular white posts - I mean no one would be interested in ... er ....
As you were
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
