Bias? I'm not sure where you are seeing bias in CNN's coverage. They portrayed him as a kind and honest man who did what he thought was best for the country, as opposed to what was best for himself or the Republican party.
There's your bias right there. Honest? That's completely laughable. Best for the country? Pah-lease.
Ford is a man who let a crook go free for the benefit of the Republican party. Just imagine Nixon, a dirty Republican, and 4-5 years of a trial where everyone knew he had broken the law. Reagan would have never made it into office in a political climate like that. And all of Nixon's cronies such as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush Sr, would have had their careers ruined.
No, Ford's actions were for the benefit of the only person who elected him to the position of President of the United States: Richard Nixon.
That's why we fund public university research.
I believe that's where the current cure for ulcers came from. Prior to that, the industry was all focused around providing antacids. The new research came out saying that ulcers were caused by bacteria. Now, what was previously a chronic problem that also contributed to cancer is now treatable by special antibiotics that target the lining in the stomach.
I know publically funded university research is "anti-capitalist" or "socialist", but I don't give a damn. The profit motive is not good for the public in every business and every field.
The problem is that the public have directly funded both the drug companies and the research universities. In return, the drug companies charge Americans higher prices for drugs than they charge in other countries. We get currently get screwed both ways.
And hence the problem and why people have this debate in the first place. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...
twins or clones would be born perfectly mirroring each other's actions until one receive stimuli that the other did not.
No, both receive different stimuli. They are the same on the genetic level, but separate individuals. The fact that there is another person there means they are getting differing stimuli.
If I don't have free will, why did I spend so damn long at the grocery store choosing which apples to buy?
It's all an illusion of psychology. You don't have perfect knowledge of your entire life, so you don't know that you choose apples because your mother bought them all the time. You don't have perfect knowledge of your genetics, so you don't know that apples have certain vitamins and minerals that your body craves over other fruit.
Some people don't know why they beat their children. But then a psychologist shows up and it's determined that they themselves were neglected when they were a child. From you and I looking from the outside in, it appears like they just up and chose their action. But in reality, they really didn't have a choice.
Your goals you decide based on your life, experiences, and genetics. They are not set from some place outside the universe. As such, they are completely deterministic.
If you truly believe it's all mental masturbation, then why bother replying? You think you are freely choosing to respond, but in reality you have a compulsion to be right and win arguments, determined from your personality, which is itself determined from your life experience and genetics. Your free will is an illusion. You just can't help responding.
How would you ever ascertain that an desire comes from nothing as opposed to something? "Coming from nothing" is the same as we don't know where it came from or how it came.
Ever heard of psychology? There are plenty of desires when on the surface look like they come from nothing, but are in fact rooted in prior experience or genetics.
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy.
The basic problem is that free will is an abstract philosophical concept (and ill-defined one at that), based on observing one's own mental processes from the inside, and as such cannot be directly mapped into any physical conditions. As a result, any attempt to use laws of physics to prove the matter either way will end up producing absurd results.
Science through CAT scans and the like has determined that mental processes do have a physical component in the brain. As a result, physics and genetics do apply to thought processes, despite your attempt to say that would produce "absurd results". Thoughts can be determined, making them deterministic.
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy. Desires affect choices. Genetics and prior life experiences affect desire. So, your choice regarding your career or lunch are determined by your past.
Free will is the opposite. Your choices are not the result of your life, your experiences, or your genetics. Your choices come from some undefined place outside of nature.
Why do we care? Determinism allows for modern science, modern physics, modern biology, modern medicine, etc. It is cause and effect. Even more fundamentally, it makes a refutation of God himself. If God is good, then he can not condemn you to hell for choices that are not your own. That is why all the big religions line up under free will. All of that is also why this is more than just "mental masturbation".
Bullshit. If you mix oxygen and hydrogen, then you'll get a big reaction and some water. You can call it predicting the future. I call it science. You don't need to "simulate the entire universe".
I have a choice over what I want for lunch. I have free will.
If a large meteor slams into my house. I'm going to die. I have no free will.
No, you do not understand determinism either. Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy.
Your choice for lunch was causally determined from an unbroken chain of prior occurrences in your life and genetics. You're genetically predisposed to dislike the taste of fish meat, so you skip over the baked salmon. You like hamburgers and fries since they're high in fat and remind you of the happy times of your childhood, so you pick those up. There was actually no free choice in your decision. If someone 100 years ago had perfect knowledge of the universe, they could have picked out what you'd have for lunch today.
Determinism relies upon cause and effect. If there is a possible cause in the universe which can affect our decisions, then that is not some middle gray area, that is determinism.
Determinism more than just in your head. It is the sum effect of your life, experiences, and genetics. Free will is the opposite, stating your decisions come from outside your life, your experiences, and your genetics. It basically states that your decisions come from outside of nature, making them supernatural.
Determinism states that your choices are ultimately from your life, your experiences, and your genetics. All your decisions are ultimately based on cause and effect within the universe.
Free will is the opposite. It states that your choices are ultimately not from your life, your experiences, your genetics, or this universe. Your choices come from outside of nature, and are therefore supernatural.
Yea, that's a classic religious argument: "God has to exist, because if he doesn't you got no free will, and your existence is base and meaningless" yadda yadda yadda.
No, you've got the argument backwards. Since God is good, he can not send people to hell if their actions are ultimately not their responsibility, such as under determinism. Therefore, free will must exist to excuse God from sending people to hell. That's why all the big religions line up under free will, despite the fact that they still talk about fate and destiny. It's a bad argument since it presupposes a lot of things, not the least of which is God.
People can already predict what you're going to do. It's called psychology. Granted, it's a soft science with imperfect results. But, that's an artifact of having imperfect information of people's lives and genetics. Give it time and I'm certain psychology can become a hard science. At that point it will be scary accurate and people will have an impossible time bringing up free will arguments.
There is an answer. It's called determinism and causality. And it has led to modern science, modern physics, modern medicine, and the like. That is why it is important and why people spend a lot of time thinking about it.
The so-called problem with determinism is that it also refutes religion. That is why all the big religions line up against it. If someone is ultimately not responsible for their actions, then God can not be good for punishing you to hell for those same actions. Free will is brought in to let God off the hook for sending people to hell, despite the weakness of its argument. That is why we're having this big discussion where it's basically a few other people and I against the vast majority of the rest. The vast majority of the rest are the vast majority who also believe in religion.
It's entirely possible that in some situations you have free will, and in others you do not.
What you're saying doesn't make sense. You're saying causality and the physical laws of the universe are sometimes suspended. It's like saying you can step out of a ten story building and sometimes not fall, just like in cartoons. Either you have gravity, or you don't. Either you have causality, or you don't. And either you have determinism, or you don't.
It's illogical to assume that you must necessarily always or never have a choice.
The argument regarding free will/determinism is not about having choices, but where the choices are coming from. Determinism says choices come from your life, your experiences, and your genetics. Free will refutes determinism, stating your choices come from someplace other than your life, your experiences, and your genetics. Free will doesn't actually state where your choices come from, leaving you to fill in your own imaginary fairy tale.
Free will exists in the sense that noone can predict your future actions (including you).
What you are referring to is an illusion. If something could have full and perfect knowledge of the universe and all contents, it could use causality to make a perfect prediction of your exact future. That is determinism.
And that model would take at least as much time as it takes you to reach a decision, so no insight into the future is possible.
You're talking about an imaginary model. You're making the assumption regarding the speed of the model, which is an imaginary assumption. Your assumption doesn't tell you anything and certainly doesn't prove/disprove free will or determinism.
If free will is an illusion, then you don't have free will. What you have then is causality, which means determinism. It is not a false dichotomy. The universe either operates by cause and effect or it does not. There is no middle ground.
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Why? Nixon was a crook. There is no "class" in letting criminals go free.
Bias? I'm not sure where you are seeing bias in CNN's coverage. They portrayed him as a kind and honest man who did what he thought was best for the country, as opposed to what was best for himself or the Republican party.
There's your bias right there. Honest? That's completely laughable. Best for the country? Pah-lease.
Ford is a man who let a crook go free for the benefit of the Republican party. Just imagine Nixon, a dirty Republican, and 4-5 years of a trial where everyone knew he had broken the law. Reagan would have never made it into office in a political climate like that. And all of Nixon's cronies such as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush Sr, would have had their careers ruined.
No, Ford's actions were for the benefit of the only person who elected him to the position of President of the United States: Richard Nixon.
That's why we fund public university research. I believe that's where the current cure for ulcers came from. Prior to that, the industry was all focused around providing antacids. The new research came out saying that ulcers were caused by bacteria. Now, what was previously a chronic problem that also contributed to cancer is now treatable by special antibiotics that target the lining in the stomach.
I know publically funded university research is "anti-capitalist" or "socialist", but I don't give a damn. The profit motive is not good for the public in every business and every field.
The problem is that the public have directly funded both the drug companies and the research universities. In return, the drug companies charge Americans higher prices for drugs than they charge in other countries. We get currently get screwed both ways.
And this disproves determinism how?
And this proves free will how?
I get it. I just don't agree with it.
And hence the problem and why people have this debate in the first place. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink...
twins or clones would be born perfectly mirroring each other's actions until one receive stimuli that the other did not.
No, both receive different stimuli. They are the same on the genetic level, but separate individuals. The fact that there is another person there means they are getting differing stimuli.
If I don't have free will, why did I spend so damn long at the grocery store choosing which apples to buy?
It's all an illusion of psychology. You don't have perfect knowledge of your entire life, so you don't know that you choose apples because your mother bought them all the time. You don't have perfect knowledge of your genetics, so you don't know that apples have certain vitamins and minerals that your body craves over other fruit.
Some people don't know why they beat their children. But then a psychologist shows up and it's determined that they themselves were neglected when they were a child. From you and I looking from the outside in, it appears like they just up and chose their action. But in reality, they really didn't have a choice.
Your goals you decide based on your life, experiences, and genetics. They are not set from some place outside the universe. As such, they are completely deterministic.
Yeah, like someone can both be pregnant and not pregnant. Errr... wait...
If you truly believe it's all mental masturbation, then why bother replying? You think you are freely choosing to respond, but in reality you have a compulsion to be right and win arguments, determined from your personality, which is itself determined from your life experience and genetics. Your free will is an illusion. You just can't help responding.
How would you ever ascertain that an desire comes from nothing as opposed to something? "Coming from nothing" is the same as we don't know where it came from or how it came.
Ever heard of psychology? There are plenty of desires when on the surface look like they come from nothing, but are in fact rooted in prior experience or genetics.
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy.
The basic problem is that free will is an abstract philosophical concept (and ill-defined one at that), based on observing one's own mental processes from the inside, and as such cannot be directly mapped into any physical conditions. As a result, any attempt to use laws of physics to prove the matter either way will end up producing absurd results.
Science through CAT scans and the like has determined that mental processes do have a physical component in the brain. As a result, physics and genetics do apply to thought processes, despite your attempt to say that would produce "absurd results". Thoughts can be determined, making them deterministic.
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy. Desires affect choices. Genetics and prior life experiences affect desire. So, your choice regarding your career or lunch are determined by your past.
Free will is the opposite. Your choices are not the result of your life, your experiences, or your genetics. Your choices come from some undefined place outside of nature.
Why do we care? Determinism allows for modern science, modern physics, modern biology, modern medicine, etc. It is cause and effect. Even more fundamentally, it makes a refutation of God himself. If God is good, then he can not condemn you to hell for choices that are not your own. That is why all the big religions line up under free will. All of that is also why this is more than just "mental masturbation".
Bullshit. If you mix oxygen and hydrogen, then you'll get a big reaction and some water. You can call it predicting the future. I call it science. You don't need to "simulate the entire universe".
I have a choice over what I want for lunch. I have free will. If a large meteor slams into my house. I'm going to die. I have no free will.
No, you do not understand determinism either. Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No wholly random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur, according to this philosophy.
Your choice for lunch was causally determined from an unbroken chain of prior occurrences in your life and genetics. You're genetically predisposed to dislike the taste of fish meat, so you skip over the baked salmon. You like hamburgers and fries since they're high in fat and remind you of the happy times of your childhood, so you pick those up. There was actually no free choice in your decision. If someone 100 years ago had perfect knowledge of the universe, they could have picked out what you'd have for lunch today.
Determinism relies upon cause and effect. If there is a possible cause in the universe which can affect our decisions, then that is not some middle gray area, that is determinism.
Determinism more than just in your head. It is the sum effect of your life, experiences, and genetics. Free will is the opposite, stating your decisions come from outside your life, your experiences, and your genetics. It basically states that your decisions come from outside of nature, making them supernatural.
Determinism states that your choices are ultimately from your life, your experiences, and your genetics. All your decisions are ultimately based on cause and effect within the universe.
Free will is the opposite. It states that your choices are ultimately not from your life, your experiences, your genetics, or this universe. Your choices come from outside of nature, and are therefore supernatural.
Yea, that's a classic religious argument: "God has to exist, because if he doesn't you got no free will, and your existence is base and meaningless" yadda yadda yadda.
No, you've got the argument backwards. Since God is good, he can not send people to hell if their actions are ultimately not their responsibility, such as under determinism. Therefore, free will must exist to excuse God from sending people to hell. That's why all the big religions line up under free will, despite the fact that they still talk about fate and destiny. It's a bad argument since it presupposes a lot of things, not the least of which is God.
People can already predict what you're going to do. It's called psychology. Granted, it's a soft science with imperfect results. But, that's an artifact of having imperfect information of people's lives and genetics. Give it time and I'm certain psychology can become a hard science. At that point it will be scary accurate and people will have an impossible time bringing up free will arguments.
There is an answer. It's called determinism and causality. And it has led to modern science, modern physics, modern medicine, and the like. That is why it is important and why people spend a lot of time thinking about it.
The so-called problem with determinism is that it also refutes religion. That is why all the big religions line up against it. If someone is ultimately not responsible for their actions, then God can not be good for punishing you to hell for those same actions. Free will is brought in to let God off the hook for sending people to hell, despite the weakness of its argument. That is why we're having this big discussion where it's basically a few other people and I against the vast majority of the rest. The vast majority of the rest are the vast majority who also believe in religion.
It's entirely possible that in some situations you have free will, and in others you do not.
What you're saying doesn't make sense. You're saying causality and the physical laws of the universe are sometimes suspended. It's like saying you can step out of a ten story building and sometimes not fall, just like in cartoons. Either you have gravity, or you don't. Either you have causality, or you don't. And either you have determinism, or you don't.
It's illogical to assume that you must necessarily always or never have a choice.
The argument regarding free will/determinism is not about having choices, but where the choices are coming from. Determinism says choices come from your life, your experiences, and your genetics. Free will refutes determinism, stating your choices come from someplace other than your life, your experiences, and your genetics. Free will doesn't actually state where your choices come from, leaving you to fill in your own imaginary fairy tale.
Free will exists in the sense that noone can predict your future actions (including you).
What you are referring to is an illusion. If something could have full and perfect knowledge of the universe and all contents, it could use causality to make a perfect prediction of your exact future. That is determinism.
And that model would take at least as much time as it takes you to reach a decision, so no insight into the future is possible.
You're talking about an imaginary model. You're making the assumption regarding the speed of the model, which is an imaginary assumption. Your assumption doesn't tell you anything and certainly doesn't prove/disprove free will or determinism.
Determinism is not limited to the processes in the brain. The outside world is also part of determinism.
If free will is an illusion, then you don't have free will. What you have then is causality, which means determinism. It is not a false dichotomy. The universe either operates by cause and effect or it does not. There is no middle ground.