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if free-will is not possible ?

 
 
GoshisDead
 
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Reply Tue 13 Jul, 2010 03:56 pm
@kennethamy,
That is your most entertaining analogy yet. Kudos to a new height in forum entertainment.
kennethamy
 
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Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2010 08:01 am
@GoshisDead,
GoshisDead wrote:

That is your most entertaining analogy yet. Kudos to a new height in forum entertainment.


Thank you, but what is important is whether you have learned anything from it. For instance that freedom of the will is a matter of degree, and that one can be both compelled to make a choice and yet make that choice. For example, I certainly would not want to hand over my wallet to a mugger who had a gun pointed at me. But, rather than take the chance of being shot, I choose to do so. Not, of course, of my own free will, but because it is, as we say, "the lesser of two evils". So I was both compelled to make the choice, yes made the choice, but not, of course, of my own free will.

Philosophy is complicated, and has to be figured out. I hope you learn that too-eventually.
GoshisDead
 
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Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2010 11:30 am
@kennethamy,
As you say, a matter of degree, hence your outrageously fallacious analogies. Vast difference of degree between not wanting to argue and being held at gunpoint. Sort of the difference between being compelled to buy cookies by the "awe shucks how cuteness" of Girl Scouts and Being compelled to buy protection from the mafia.

Human behavior is complicated. I hope you learn that one day.
kennethamy
 
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Reply Wed 14 Jul, 2010 05:10 pm
@GoshisDead,
GoshisDead wrote:

As you say, a matter of degree, hence your outrageously fallacious analogies. Vast difference of degree between not wanting to argue and being held at gunpoint. Sort of the difference between being compelled to buy cookies by the "awe shucks how cuteness" of Girl Scouts and Being compelled to buy protection from the mafia.

Human behavior is complicated. I hope you learn that one day.


Could you explain what the fallacy is? My point was just that I may be compelled to do something (and therefore not do it freely) although I would rather do it, and, in fact do it, than I would something worse. How I am compelled to do that something is irrelevant. So, if you do not agree, could you say what your objection is (in case you have one, of course). Don't you agree that you may be compelled to do something even if you would rather do it than do something worse, and that therefore although you do not do it freely, you nevertheless are doing it from choice? Now, that is fairly complex behavior, don't you think? So I don't see why you accuse me of not being aware that human behavior is complicated. What seems to me pretty simple-minded is the view that a choice to do something is either free or not free with there being no degrees of freedom. And that is what I am pointing out is not true.
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