[FRIAM] alternative response

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Thanks, Marcus.  Exactly the project I thought we were engaged in.  I still do no grasp Glen's rendition but I have yet to re-find the post in which he lays it out amongst the splatter.  

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 9:03 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] alternative response

The point is to construct some explanation for how the concept of free will could possibly be meaningful by considering a range of commitments in turn (and then revoking them and trying something else until something works).   I can't see there are any commitments that make the idea meaningful.   Nonetheless, our legal system includes notions like intent and punishment like they are meaningful, and not just another social apparatus forced on non-believers by believers.  Free will is a problem for believers in an omniscient god, because it gives and requires individuals to have the means to sin and the means to avoid sinning.  But with that freedom, god is no longer omniscient.  

On 6/17/20, 7:34 AM, "Friam on behalf of Jon Zingale" <friam-bounces at redfish.com on behalf of jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:

    The preoccupation with arguing over base ontological commitments reminds me
    of the *existential detectives* and their nemesis in the movie *I <3
    Huckabees*. Will demanding that the universe is determined, or almost as
    random as can be, or simulatable move any other conjectured model forward? I
    suspect that it has the effect of putting the discussion in a holding
    pattern. In each case, we are making unknown claims as to what the universe
    is, or at best wagering as to what we feel the universe will have turned out
    to be in some obnoxiously absolute way. Neutered from a motivating
    investigation and the development of a model, we may as well exclaim the
    names of numbers at one another.



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