[…] the only way we could possibly have free will is if another force is at work in the universe, but that just leads us back to God and the supernatural which science has shown couldn't possibly exist.
Your argument is flawed, James:
First, because its (unstated) crucial premise is not unassailable. To wit, absolute determinism is not something that can be shown to be true by science… Nor by logic! But also because the existence of "another force" is both possible and not necessarily "super-natural" — put differently, science has not ended yet!
An interesting book I'd recommend is Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (See here for a taste.) While I have no great taste for mystical "explanation," the history of Man's various belief systems requires more explanation than "primitive" guesses or psychopathology. No? ———————————————————— Actually (sort-of) on topic: <a href="http://content.ebscohost.com/pdf14_16/pdf/1967/ICS/01Mar67/10456484.pdf?EbscoContent=dGJyMNLe80Sep7c4yOvsOLCmr0yep69Ssqa4SLCWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGrr0qwrrRJuePfgeyx43zx1%2B6B&T=P&P=AN&S=R&D=sih&K=10456484">Here[/url]'s a readable pdf of Francis L. K. Hsu's "Christianity and the Anthropologist", a short article that sheds some light on the mystic impulse — and the various reactions to it!
your proof, or again just your overactive fertile imagination??
Sorry to be so late to this part… But I take exception to your characterization of Sanguinemoon's imagination as "fertile"! Surely, you meant "fervid"? ————————————————————— I'd ask everyone here to consider the viewpoint presented <a href="http://takimag.com/article/the_mental_illness_cop_out_jim_goad">here…[/url].
Sang, before I go on to the next page (14! My, my: Some things never change…) let me quote this comment to an article which you likely haven't read either:
Quote
Comment & Response | November 25, 2013 Firearm Legislation and Gun-Related Fatalities Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD1; Eric C. Sun, MD, PhD2; Vinay Prasad, MD3 JAMA Intern Med. 2013;173(21):2011. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.9958.
To the Editor With regard to the study by Fleegler et al,1 critics of stronger gun control policies argue that there is no rational impetus to strengthen the laws. They note that gun-related deaths have remained constant over the last 10 years; 10.4 gun-related deaths per 100 000 in the United States in 2002 and 10.3 per 100 000 in 2011. (source)
Same old song and dance: Gun control works! (Except where it's tried — because they don't try hard enough…? DC? Chicago?) The available statistics (…the last 15 years, eh?) are murky, at best. Cherry-picking data and performing feats of academic prestidigitation don't count for much.
Despite the findings, researchers did not establish a cause and effect relationship between guns and deaths. Rather, they could only establish an association.
That failure illustrates the limits of the study, said Garen Wintemute, an emergency physician and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.
"Policy makers can really draw no conclusion from this study," Wintemute said, explaining that the study doesn't provide critical answers to which laws work and why.
The larger problem is that the United States effectively stopped doing research on gun laws and violence 15 years ago and now has no evidence that shows causes and effect, he said.
Wintemute added, however, that he believes gun policies are important and can drive rates of violence down. In the future, researchers must look at how several factors including culture, gun ownership, and gun trafficking between states, he said.
Fleegler and his colleagues became interested in the relationship between gun laws and deaths last summer after the Trayvon Martin case sparked conversations about self-defense laws and the use of guns.
Despite the early lapses in grammar early-on in the article, I feel the reporters' pain! Spinning this 'correctly' must have been anguishing, and futile…
No statistics for the last 15 years?! Maybe they're hiding among Lerner's 2009-2011 emails…
And what is the NRA utopia, their end game? Mine is to simply reduce criminals access to guns. Of course, it's impossible to completely eliminate it.
As far as I know, the NRA doesn't propose a Utopia or an end-game. They simply support an ancient right supposedly secured to a free people…
You want to feel safe and secure; and unencumbered by an oppressive government… Pard, you can't get there from here. Leastwise, not by that road: Government regulation doesn't go there. If you really want to reduce criminals' access to guns, get a concealed-carry permit! Most criminals are cowards and, by your own reasoning, every little bit helps. No? But you'd rather the coercive might of the federal government absolve you of personal responsibility. Even if it does little or no actual good. Even if it does actual harm. If I'm wrong, please explain how.
In other words, what would it take to make you feel safe and secure? That's a simple enough question, I think. I'll reply, after consideration, to your answer — if you make one.
Harris is a hoot! He's so smart he can appear dumb on any subject… And he's so dumb he repeatedly does: Note the use of the word 'flourish' in the quote below:
… my view of moral truth demands a little more than this -- not because I am bent upon reducing morality to "physical" facts in any crude sense, but because I can't see how we can keep the notion of moral truth within a walled garden, forever set apart from the truths of science. In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil. (
source) Is flourishing an ultimate good? Harris will always find something or other to be such. But the only 'science' involved will be that of opinion polling, which doesn't seem a very deep access of morality and -need we mention?- ethics? Focus-grouped slogans seem a poor recompense for a scientist's sincere explorations. But Harris' bugaboos don't particularly interest me; I don't care why he believes what he believes. It's enough to see what silliness his proscriptions and prescriptions are…
is this the original version or the one she had to rewrite?
While your question is presumptuous -meant merely to cast aspersions, I'd like you to expand it into a full-blown accusation… I'll be happy to respond to such.
You could try, e.g., How the Laws of Physics Lie (free pdf) by Nancy Cartwright, of Stanford, LSE, and other well-known institutions. Sorry, no video yet… (I wonder: Would you forgive her mentoring of Naomi Oreskes?)
Utopians (Progressives) usually prate about 'effectiveness'… And how, if only they were in control, there would be enough! Eventually. Would you also support the Precautionary Principle?
I am predisposed to understanding science and math easily
The trick is to understand deeply, sir. My predisposition re science is philosophical analysis, not worship. You seem enamored of what Dennett called greedy reductionism, James, and you'll have to talk yourself out of it… And that's the point of my posts here: To supply some occasion to you for that endeavor. —————————————————— Just saw your reply to ensbb3, James… Doesn't this thread itself provide the context? Are not your posts in other threads corroborative?
It's okay, Sparta. Popper is long out of fashion in today's politicized "science." You shouldn't have expected anyone here to have noticed let alone recognized the quote you opened with…
If you can find it in translation, I'd recommend the book Wittgenstein's Poker to you. (For enjoyment and edification…)
The ones arrogant ignoramuses like you keep digging, James! Pot holes in our streets, roads and freeways; luckily, our tire technology keeps improving… The clerical/bureaucratical mind will ever be with us. But we may minimize their influence, and thus the damage they do.
(You know how science works, right? Then go back and read my previous post…before one of us "causes" this thread to be locked!)
Could you start first by justifying induction? No, of course, not!
I can start with the ABCs, if you need to.
By all means, do! ——————————————————— @Sparta: You're beginning to make sense… Er, I mean, you've seemed to recognize the non-sense of others. ( I look forward to your debunking my theories!)
There are, of course and indubitably, physical processes underlying thought, thinkers and a Universe that accommodates such. There may well be constraints upon systemizations of our recent and provisional understanding of "it all" and how It came to be. (Note: The capitalization rightly becomes a confusing and confounding factor… Th. Aquinas knew more than you or I, and you'd think him a dolt, James?) But you, James, don't seem to recognize the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, the prospective expansion of its ambit, and the primeval urge that contenances it. You are but a voyeur of science! Take your hand out of your pocket and open a book… Any one you happen upon, for this point: One letter, misconstrued because of lack of pressure from the press or ink from the pot, would –necessarily!– have changed the world? Or perhaps you'd include poor eyesight? (Remember: There is nothing but Physics!) Or a mere diminution of ambient light? But you claim more: The world is often presumed to be our little Earth. You'd have the entirety of creation (…there's no better word for it) be re-cast, by this slight alteration.
Did I call it a "slight" alteration? Forgive me! Since Physics is all there is, this -to you and me- mere fudge factor is, on your view, such a mountainous cavalcade of "real" events that its momentous repercussions re-convene the Big Bang constituents for reconsideration…! But how would you know?
I admit, your confusion of epistemology with ontology is common enough. As is your "understanding" of science. As is your smug attitude. But commonality -like "science by consensus"- is not an argument. At least, not one that would be acceptable to a rational auditor.
So, by any means you can muster, James: Give me A and B. Then C… Presumably, you have X, Y and Z up your sleeve! So, don't be surprised or act coy if I call you for dealing from the bottom of the deck. (I'm an old hand at this game.)
"If you move a single grain of sand on a beach, you can change the course of history" and one can logically follow that through to see how that is true. Break it down just a bit further and you can say that changing one particle in the universe will lead to a different outcome for our universe and that is equally true and logical to see. Therefore, from the instant that things started moving there was only one possible outcome for the universe. We are in the middle of it and aware of it as well, but there is absolutely nothing we can do to change it.
Could you start first by justifying induction? No, of course, not!
I find in your quaint determinism neither solace nor awe... (For which, I'm sure you'll rebuke me; but it can't be helped, since I am actually fascinated by science, both its practice and its results.) Nor does it strike me as more than the naive musings of a manic, undisciplined intellect, the gee-gaw misapprehended among the midden's detritus.
Sanguine, you give the same old song and dance! And, if you're asked where your preferred prescription has been profitably enacted, your perennial reply is: Why, not widely enough! A city, a county, a state are too limiting for sensible regulation. Indeed, a nation may be! You want control -- both senses apply.
James, your "No one […] would ever call physics (with all of its mathematical beauty), an unjust, unfair, unreasonable mystery cult" comment leaves out the bit to be justified: That physics is all there is…
You yourself don't believe it. Why are you so insistent that others do so? ——————————————————————————— @ersi, who said: "Otherwise your contribution looks like, well, something about a bridge and measurements of rationality... hmm, looks pretty moot."
It may be "a bridge too far"… But I believe Wm. S. Porter ("O. Henry") knew a Smoot in North Carolina. That was, of course, before his troubles, travels and travails. I, however, knew the day-glo green painted gradations on the pedestrian walks of the bridge itself, marking its length in Smoots, a curious thing. No?
Measurement is perforce the sine qua non of science! Unfortunately, it is also the refuge of the pseudo-scientist… Slap a number on it, and you've convinced half the hapless mendacities that it may be true! And, if so, why not them?
If rationality is to be discussed, shouldn't it be defined in agreed-upon terms and measured in agreed-upon units? Or can reasonableness wend its own way? ——————————————————— Back to James: Cook-book mathematics doesn't interest me much. Neither does metaphysics, much. But reductionist empiricism is vain — in both senses…
In 1973, the draft ended in favor of an all volunteer military. Welcome to the 21st century, where just because you're over the age of 18 doesn't mean you're part of the militia. That time is long over.
Indeed, since 2009 the sovereignty of the United States has -by the current executive administration- been doubted, denigrated, and -yes, friends, it's true: dhimmi-ized… (Although Mexicalification is rightly seen, in some environs, as the more immanent threat!) There is no "America," according to these 'true believers' in — whatever: There is only the eventual uprising of the oppressed! (Marx couldn't be wrong! Right? ) Well, such may find that there is indeed a militia… The Oops! moment of the intelligentsia will go down in history as another Cinco de Mayo, a PR event that -in the end- makes no difference. But the quiet preparedness of denizens acclimated to freedom in these United States will have their say, and keep their ancient rights. Sanguinemoon will benefit, however much he complains.
Sadly true, jax… As much as I tend to -nowadays- think great swaths (swathes? ) of academics (subjects and practitioners both!) are undeserving of perusal or even preservation, let alone praise, I'd like to keep the term's original meanings. (The ridiculing of Scholastics, arguing over "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," often shows that the scoffer merely denigrates rational thought and critical reasoning: He must know, first, who is with him; second, what's in it for him; and, third, why he should have to think… Which perforce leads him back to the beginning!)
jseaton2311 said
People use all the convenient inventions of science, but when that exact same science with all its marvelous concepts describes how the universe came into being--they call it BS. The universe is all physics and since we are a by-product of the ingredients in the universe--we are all just physics as well. The fact that we are alive and top dog on this rock doesn't make us any less a slave to the laws of physics than the atom. There was no breath of life blown into us, we evolved from single cell organisms to what we are today and it was all physics. Thought, consciousness and even our 'perceived' free will are all simply a matter of physics as well...nothing special there.
Please, James, tell me -purely in terms of physics- how you came to such a conclusion? (I can parse partial differential equations, if need be; and might be willing to apply various modes of renormalization — if you get stuck in mathematical nonsense…) But know that I may have to let you go, if you prefer your rabbit hole…
Which is to say, since you seem not to know it, that your "just physics" is un-just, neither fair nor reasonable — merely scientism, yet another Mystery Cult.
One needn't know much of English — to appear to be conversing in it. I'll grant that. But denigrating a fine old word like 'moot' (see here) is beyond the pale!
However, I remember the bridge over the River Charles, between Cambridge and Boston, at Massachusetts Avenue being marked off in Smoots… The story I'd heard most often was that an MIT freshman named Smoot was laid end-to-end across its span; somewhat similar to the French meter he was, then. Except that the original Smoot wasn't encased and secured, should a dispute occur later. Hence my contribution to this topic:
Until and unless the original Smoot can be produced, such measurements are iffy. Even can he be such measurements will remain arguable, since Smoot may have grown or shrunk. Indeed, the bridge may have grown or shrunk.
A rationalist -measured by what standard? For some reason (?), nobody mentioned any…
) of academics (subjects and practitioners both!) are undeserving of perusal or even preservation, let alone praise, I'd like to keep the term's original meanings.