July 25, 2010, 5:26 PMThe Limits of the Coded WorldBy WILLIAM EGGINTON
The New York times Thursday, sept 9 2010 Opinion
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs_v3/opinionator/opinionator_post.png
We have no reason to assume that either predictability or lack of predictability has anything to say about free will.While our senses can only bring us verifiable knowledge about how the world appears in time and space, our reason always strives to know more.
The belief that our empirical exploration of the world and of the human brain could ever eradicate human freedom is an error.As much as we owe the nature of our current existence to the evolutionary forces Darwin first discovered, or to the cultures we grow up in, or to the chemical states affecting our brain processes at any given moment, none of this impacts on our freedom. I am free because neither science nor religion can ever tell me, with certainty, what my future will be and what I should do about it. The dictum from Sartre that Strawson quoted thus gets it exactly right: I am condemned to freedom. I am not free because I can make choices, but because I must make them, all the time, even when I think I have no choice to make.
One may pl see the full article in The New York Times / Opinion /dt
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif
thank you
sekhar
--- On Thu, 9/9/10,
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com <
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
From:
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com <
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [C] [Wittrs] Digest Number 349
To:
WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, 9 September, 2010, 2:54 PM
WittrsAMR
Messages In This Digest (2
Messages)
1a.
Re: Understanding Property Dualism
From:
gabuddabout
2a.
Re: [C] Digest Number 347
From:
iro3isdx
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Messages
1a.
Re: Understanding Property Dualism
Posted by: "gabuddabout"
wittrsamr@freelists.org
Wed Sep 8, 2010 5:15 pm (PDT)
--- In WittrsAMR@yahoogrou ps.com, "walto" <wittrsamr@. ..> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups. com, "BruceD" <blroadies@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > SWM wrote:
> > >
> > > "everything in the universe is physical: some of it is also mental."
> >
>
> Stuart is right. That was a misattribution of something I said.
>
>
>
> > I'm wondering on what basis he choose this rather than "everything > in
> > the universe is mental: some of it is also physical."
> >
>
> The reason is that I believe that what I wrote is true (though I don't deny that it's controversial) while its converse that you suggest above as a substitute is quite obviously false, Spinoza, Fechner, and Galen Strawson notwithstanding.
>
> W
I (probably wrongly, so you tell me) used to think (haven't thought about it for a long time) that Spinoza's doctrine of mode parallelism might (might) be thought of as a version of a wedding of the correspondence and coherence theory of truth such that insofar as we have correspondence we assume a sort of parallelism and insofar as we have coherence, we have something like the mental mode being what it is, even though the Spinoza, like moderns, had some sort of identity theory when defining mind as the thought of the body, which does sound idealistic in one sense and downright modern in another.
Cheers,
Budd
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2a.
Re: [C] Digest Number 347
Posted by: "iro3isdx"
wittrsamr@freelists.org
Wed Sep 8, 2010 10:11 pm (PDT)
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups. com, Rajasekhar Goteti <wittrsamr@. ..> wrote:
> responding to
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/Wittrs/ message/6277
> sekhar:
> What does the group say about this article?
It would have helped if you had provided a link to the article.
It appears to be:
http://www.nytimes. com/2010/ 09/05/books/ review/Bickerton -t.html
I don't think you can easily separate language from culture.
Sure, in one sense language is a cultural artifact. However, our
ability to use language is biological. For that matter, our capacity
to be part of a culture is biological.
Deutscher seems to be particularly interested in whether grammar is
biological - presumably he is addressing some of Chomsky's claims. On
that, I agree with Deutscher that grammar is cultural, contrary to
Chomsky. But we shouldn't take that too far. Our biology surely
constrains the kind of grammar we are likely to use in our languages.
Regards,
Neil
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