I didn't really have a favorite band and left it blank, but then decided it'd be much funnier to try it lots of times with band=1, then =2, etc. and see get results from #0 to #10. Many of them are disturbing, but none so much as #6.
because you don't dispose of free will by saying "we don't know what it is so let's not bother with it". people mostly want to discuss the notion of "free will", not some random other thing.
I agree that 'dispose' is a bad word, but 'there is no property coinciding very much at all with what we think free will should be' sounds reasonable (and I would tend to think true).
I don't think it's unhelpful. I think it clears up a gigantic mound of confusion between people who think they have a common definition and really don't.
Stopping there is unfortunate too, but no-one person could do everything. The obvious next steps seem to be:
(1) Is there some definition we didn't think of which is a good one for free will?
(2) Why are poeple fascinated by free will, and can we resolve the argument without a good definition?
my impression is that people have a notion---"free will"---that has its roots somewhere in theology or philosophy---I don't know the details, and that they want to know what that means, so that they can see if we have it.
to say that we can't define it so we should go and define something else instead doesn't help anything at all. There are millions of things we can define that have nothing to do with free will. Defining them isn't particularly interesting to the theological/philosophical issues.
But there's some things we can't define, and I think accepting that is necessary, because then we can move on to other, perhaps more useful, approaches.
But sometimes people's notions are wrong. Analogy. People thought light had to be either a wave, or a particle. They insisted they had to know which. Then someone came along and showed they were asking the wrong question. Light was something else, that was often quite like one, but sometimes quite like the other.
Understanding progressed, but first by accepting that the original question was unanswerable.
I think the same applies here. I don't think there is a definition of free will that fits our notion of what it should be. I think we need to define our wave-function equivalent. Alternatively, I'm game to looking for a definition, but if I think there isn't one, and you think there is, I think you should do the looking :)
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jack
no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 04:49 pm (UTC)I don't think it's unhelpful. I think it clears up a gigantic mound of confusion between people who think they have a common definition and really don't.
Stopping there is unfortunate too, but no-one person could do everything. The obvious next steps seem to be:
(1) Is there some definition we didn't think of which is a good one for free will?
(2) Why are poeple fascinated by free will, and can we resolve the argument without a good definition?
no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 05:36 pm (UTC)to say that we can't define it so we should go and define something else instead doesn't help anything at all. There are millions of things we can define that have nothing to do with free will. Defining them isn't particularly interesting to the theological/philosophical issues.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-16 12:08 pm (UTC)Understanding progressed, but first by accepting that the original question was unanswerable.
I think the same applies here. I don't think there is a definition of free will that fits our notion of what it should be. I think we need to define our wave-function equivalent. Alternatively, I'm game to looking for a definition, but if I think there isn't one, and you think there is, I think you should do the looking :)