Is free-will an illusion?

@Tuna,

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But you should check them out before you make that judgment.

I've "checked them out" as far as I care to. Analysis is....well...OK, I guess. But me, I go for synthesis!

"Analytic philosophy" is an oxymoron. That aint philosophy.

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@layman,

I think your prejudice is unwarranted. Hang with the AP's for a while. You're bullshit-detector will only improve.

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@Tuna,

Interminable casuistry pertaining to the most minor details of the most minor details of something like "linguistics" just don't keep my attention for long, for some damn reason.

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@Tuna,

One thing that Wittgenstein said that I thought was rather insightful went something like this:

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You have answered your question when you stop asking it.

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@Tuna,

One thing Nietzsche said that I agree with went something like this:

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I distrust all systems, and I reject them. The will to a system is the will to untruth.

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@layman,

That's fine. I have no stake in it.

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@Tuna,

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And no, you didn't solve Russell's Paradox. If there was a solution, then set theory wouldn't be axiomatized to avoid it.

But the solution I found WAS that no set can ever contain itself. The Russel paradox proves that this is the case, since without such principle, a logical contradiction occurs.

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I can point you to good sources for understanding why we can't define truth, along with the valiant attempts of analytical philosophers to overcome the problem Frege demonstrated. If you're interested, let me know.

I'd love to see that, if only to debunk it.

By the way, if those dudes can't define truth, how do they know that what they say is true, when they say truth can't be defined?... :-) Another paradox, easy enough to resolve. What they say cannot logically be true.

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@layman,

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But me, I go for synthesis!

I agree that analysis without synthesis is a waste of time, endless hair splitting, but synthesis without analysis is also weak. We have two legs to walk, two brains to think, two eyes to watch. And we can't think without BOTH synthesis and analysis. I have spoken. ;-)

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@Olivier5,

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But the solution I found WAS that no set can ever contain itself

Here's the question I want an answer to, Ollie: Would the set of chauvinists be big enough to contain Bertrand Russell?

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@Olivier5,

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I agree that analysis without synthesis is a waste of time, endless hair splitting, but synthesis without analysis is also weak. We have two legs to walk, two brains to think, two eyes to watch. And we can't think without BOTH synthesis and analysis. I have spoken. ;-)

Well, you have a point, Ollie, but looky here: I would rather be out synthesizing babies than analyzing them, know what I'm sayin?

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@layman,

I see what you mean, I love to synthesize babies too, but once you have them, analysing them becomes useful. Like when they cry to no end and you have to figure out what they want.

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@layman,

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Would the set of chauvinists be big enough to contain Bertrand Russell?

?

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@Tuna,

Tuna wrote:

But do I exist? I can't doubt it.

It does appear to be doubtable, though. The Buddhist concept of anatta is exactly that doubt. Not doubting in a nihilistic way, but doubting that either the intuition or the conceptualization match what is or can be observed.

Similarly, I don't doubt that something is going on when we apparently make choices; I'm merely skeptical about conventional descriptions of what is actually going on. They don't always seem to add up.

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@FBM,

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It does appear to be doubtable, though. The Buddhist concept of anatta is exactly that doubt. Not doubting in a nihilistic way, but doubting that either the intuition or the conceptualization match what is or can be observed.

If you're satisfied that Descartes was wrong, there's not much I can say.

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Similarly, I don't doubt that something is going on when we apparently make choices; I'm merely skeptical about conventional descriptions of what is actually going on. They don't always seem to add up.

You decide to wiggle your toes. They wiggle. This is not a schematic of the cosmos. It's just something you know. You can wiggle your toes.

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@Olivier5,

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?

I forgot that you're a damn Frog, Ollie, and might not get the joke (which is all it is). As I recall, Russell took a strong stance against granting women's suffrage.

Other words, he was one BIGTIME chauvinist pig (or so the wimminz say, anyway).

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@Tuna,

Well, taking this any further would require me to repost a bunch of peer-reviewed neuroscience journal articles from pages ago in this thread, and I don't feel up to that. Thanks for the exchange of ideas, though.

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@FBM,

Sure!

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@MoralPhilosopher23,

what exactly do you mean by free-will?

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@FBM,

"Peer-reviewed articles, again, eh? Tuna post this (already posted in another thread) for FBM to see, if ya want, eh?

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In the free will thread, FBM spammed brief excerpts from about 10-20 "peer-reviewed articles" (which, for him, means "the gospel"). In each case, I quoted additional contents of the very articles he was citing to show that the claim he thought he was "proving" was dubious. I also even quoted "peer-reviewed" scientific articles which directly challenged the validity of the speculations offered up in the papers FBM spammed.

Of course, he didn't see a word of it. I wasn't doing it for him. I was doing it for the benefit of those who might be misled by his posts.

But he just kept on saying, proudly: "No one has disputed the scientific evidence I've given!"

Ignorance is bliss, they say, eh?

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@layman,

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"Peer-reviewed articles, again, eh? Tuna post this (already posted in another thread) for FBM to see, if ya want, eh?

I took it that FBM was expressing doubts that the subjective experience of agency is reliable. He further doubts that his own personhood is real.

I don't really understand how one could go from such profound skepticism to having confidence in scientific research. FBM, could you say something about that?

1 Reply

Is free-will an illusion?

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