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Did he say that? I never heard that one. I know that Stephen Hawking said “philosophy is dead” on the very first page of one of his books, and then proceeded to write an entire book that was nothing but philosophy. It confirmed Dennett’s point that science is shot through with philosophy, even...

Terrific obit. Thanks for posting that.

Yeah, I mentioned the evolution thing upthread. The article contradicts itself slightly, saying that Gould argued that natural selection alone determined evolution and a little later saying he claimed only that selection was the “overwhelming factor” in it. However that may be, he does appear to...

All religions bear witness to lies in their own way, even yours.

Ditto.

Harry Waton: :rolleyes:

I think he was right about some things and wrong about others. Unfortunately for NoRobots, I don’t consult my “Kant’s Manual to Life” before I write a post.

Once there was a board poster named No Robots Who derided us all as Kant nanobots. His foes, he says, fellate Kant But it’s Kant he does not want, So some nobody named Waton, out he trots.

lol

Would you like to present an actual argument in your own words (not Waton’s) as opposed to childish slurs against people who know much more than you do?

The HARD determinist disagrees. The SOFT determinist is called a compatibilist. As for Waton, I don’t know who he is and don’t give a hoot about what he has to say about this or anything. Don’t give much of a hoot about Spinoza, either, who wrote some interesting things but who, like Aristotle...

Yeah, well, I think he and Einstein are wrong. Or, speaking as a compatibilist, we are free to act on our determined motives, as well as to learn from experience and alter our motives for better outcomes in the future.

Yeah, and Einstein said the exact same thing about the moon. I believe Einstein read Spinoza and a lot of other philosophers, including Hume. I think this is all wrong. If a rock or the moon were conscious it would no longer be a rock or the moon, but some kind of embodied intelligence with a...

Sure, give me a day or two, because it might be a long-ish post.

I actually agree with all of the above, more or less — if I studied it long enough I might find details to dispute or nits to pick — but how is it responsive to the quote you excerpted from me?

So, nope, no scientific evidence in the above. Still waiting for what you promised to deliver.

OK. The cause of humans? The cause of all living things? No living thing was unavoidably inevitable, and nothing arose spontaneously. So your false dichotomy is nonsense. As Gould pointed out, if you replayed evolution from the start, you’d like get a whole bunch of wildly different outcomes...

Note that derailing itself is a form of baiting. Your hypocrisy seemingly is limitless.

And why did you make the derail in the first place? And when are you going to go back to the discussion of the origin of life and answer all the outstanding questions for you, instead of ducking, weaseling, waffling, and prevaricating?

You’re absolutely right, of course, but just ignore him. I linked above the extant discussion about Dennett.