[Wittrs] Re: On Discussions about Free WIll
- From: sekhar goteti <sekhar.goteti@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:02:37 +0530
In his fine new book, ?I Is an Other,? James Geary reports on linguistic
research suggesting that people use a metaphor every 10 to 25 words.
Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think, Geary
writes. They are at the very heart of it.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, two of the leading researchers in this
field, have pointed out that we often use food metaphors to describe the
world of ideas. We devour a book, try to digest raw facts and attempt to
regurgitate other people?s ideas, even though they might be half-baked.
When talking about relationships, we often use health metaphors. A friend
might be involved in a sick relationship. Another might have a healthy
marriage.
Poetry for Everyday Life By DAVID
BROOKS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo110x16.gif
Published: April 11, 2011
sekhar
On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Cayuse <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sean Wilson wrote:
> > May I ask what are the stakes of this discussion? Not so much the
> > discussion of what the etymology of "free will" might be, but of the
> > need to take a position on "free will" generally. What are the stakes
> > of such a thing? It seems to me that this is the same issue for
> > philosophy as it is science. Imagine a study that proclaimed: "there
> > is no 'free will.'" Or one that said: "we've proved that 'free will'
> > exists." What on earth would one even do with such a thing?
>
> I found value in the free will debate in that it brings into question what
> it is, or might be, that "has" this putative "free will". The debate led me
> to the conviction that there is no such entity. I may be free to choose
> some course of action that increases the likelyhood of the future
> outcome that I prefer the most, but I don't believe there's anything that
> is free to choose my *preferences* in respect of those future outcomes.
> The link to Wittgenstein, I think, comes with his analysis of the concept
> of
> 'self' in the Tractatus ("There is no such thing as the subject that thinks
> or entertains ideas") and in the PI with his "no owner" line of thought.
> The concept of self is then stripped back to the useful notion of a unique
> organism in its habitat, without the useless accreted notions of an
> "agent of free will" and an "subject of consciousness". The value of this
> has been a kind of "tidying away" of some messy default ideas that did
> nothing more than cloud my thinking. If this is not the kind of result that
> Wittgenstein would have advocated, then I have sorely misunderstood him
> (a very real possibility here).
>
>
>
>
--
sekhar
Other related posts:
