No - it's not simply a matter of it being too hard to understand - it has to do with whether the action was evaluated by a sentient being. Sure your decisions are the result of causal processes - everything is - but your causal processes involve a highly sophisticated set of evalations relative to various goals, etc. etc. dropping the hot potato not so much.
Free will is compatible with determinism if you look at the right way.
Certainly the roots of mathematics are in practical rules for counting, keeping track of time, dividing up land, etc. but at some point (a slippery slope, really - you could say Euclid was already moving in this direction) math became pretty much an a priori discipline - particularly in the last few centuries. Group theory, Cantor's transfinite numbers, topology - none of these things were motivated by immediate practical concerns.
You might as well say that since cavemen started out painting bison and deer that all art is representational.
I'm not sure that justifies removing it from the curriculum. Shouldn't they be trying to ADD something contemporary to the curriculum and lobbying for teachers to use it? Why present this in terms of banning a book that does, in fact, criticize racism and is a great book? Sounds like a bad way to go about it to me.
The same thing goes on constantly with "Huckleberry Finn" - at least I assume it's similar - it is always presented in the press as being motivated by use of the N-word, but is perhaps more sophisticated than that (if still just as wrongheaded in my view)
Slashdot Mirror
No - it's not simply a matter of it being too hard to understand - it has to do with whether the action was evaluated by a sentient being. Sure your decisions are the result of causal processes - everything is - but your causal processes involve a highly sophisticated set of evalations relative to various goals, etc. etc. dropping the hot potato not so much. Free will is compatible with determinism if you look at the right way.
Certainly the roots of mathematics are in practical rules for counting, keeping track of time, dividing up land, etc. but at some point (a slippery slope, really - you could say Euclid was already moving in this direction) math became pretty much an a priori discipline - particularly in the last few centuries. Group theory, Cantor's transfinite numbers, topology - none of these things were motivated by immediate practical concerns.
You might as well say that since cavemen started out painting bison and deer that all art is representational.
ana and kata
Why does this make me laugh?
No offense to the poster, there's just something inextricably weird and funny about the thought of attempting colorblindness
The same thing goes on constantly with "Huckleberry Finn" - at least I assume it's similar - it is always presented in the press as being motivated by use of the N-word, but is perhaps more sophisticated than that (if still just as wrongheaded in my view)
BTW - minor point - Harper Lee is a woman