Speakpigeon
Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 6,317
- Location
- Paris, France, EU
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
Mainstream physics. I'm not one hundred percent sure it still is but I'm one hundred percent sure it was only a few years back.
I certainly could but I don't want to. I find it bewildering that the swarm of people here posing as scientifically literate should be ignorant of it.
Also I'm not interested in a discussion about this. The point is that the obvious failure to join the dots in this respect is evidence that the discussion on free will is almost exclusively ideological rather than rational.
You are smart enough and scientifically litterate enough to find out all by yourself. You'll know that's it when you see it. Come back when you do.And reference to a text where they discuss this?
EB
What the heck? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, how could I then search for it?
Whoa. And how do you think I found it!? If I could do it, you can too.
Please, don't come back until you’ve found it.
EB
PS. And it's not as if it was so important. If you needed that to understand that people have some kind of freedom to choose what they want to do then you probably deserve to remain in your ignorance until such a time as you stumble on it by chance and get another go at understanding your position in the grand scheme of things.
Most people on this board don't make much sense when it comes to expressing their views on philosophical questions. I'm sure most actual scientists would probably be better at it but not much judging by people like bright kid Krauss talking about the universe coming out of nothing. If the mainstream scientists themselves who are using this kind of language about human freedom were asked whether this should be construed as a validation of the view that human beings have some kind of basic freedom to choose what they want to do my guess is that they would probably backtrack. But since their statements about the issue are categorical, quite straightforward and so very well-known, they could only backtrack by poo-pooing the suggestion rather than have a critical look at their language.
In a way, you must be right, the kind of free will some here try to argue for cannot possibly exist. Most people here cer-tainly behave as if they were automata, spewing continuously the same nonsensical and often idiotic justifications of their views. And they appear to have absolutely no clues about that. More often than should be allowed, it is as if they have been programmed to produce random statements or random responses. It's quite fascinating and educational. I have been aware of this since my teenage years so it's no news to me. But somehow some part of my brain still hopes and tries to make sense of what they say. I certainly shouldn't expect them to do better than professional philosophers, or indeed scientists, and those don't do very well. To be sure, the amount of technical expertise on the justification of many particular views, as accumulated over a period of 2,500 years since the Ancient Greeks, is quite something and one has to at least look at it. But I'm not impressed. Philosophers are human beings and what they say is essentially a reflection of that single fact. Yet, many philosophers at least try to argue meaningfully and logically. Most scientists, certainly those who express themselves in books, are not even at that basic level, Krauss just being the perfect example of that. No wonder they need maths and double-checks to get anything done.