21 Apr 2008, 10:00 am
21 Apr 2008, 10:19 am
21 Apr 2008, 2:04 pm
21 Apr 2008, 3:10 pm
It is just such a relief to think that humanity is nothing more than a blight, a pest, an infection/infestation; no more. It wipes out pretention; it removes expectations.
Last edited by ouinon on 22 Apr 2008, 2:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
21 Apr 2008, 4:38 pm
ouinon wrote:
In your first post you dismissed the importance of the environment because it was only of value to us. And championed "free will", ... ... because it was important to us. Dismiss both on these grounds if you wish, but dismissing one and not the other is just a trifle inconsistent. 
The environment is important to many living creatures not just humans, whereas free will is only important to us, and is causing damage.
The environment is important to many living creatures not just humans, whereas free will is only important to us, and is causing damage.
I think you are misunderstanding him. If I understand him correctly, what he is saying is that value to humanity is the only thing of real moral worth, therefore he is actually detracting from the value of the environment from denying it inherent value while adding to free will because it is not usually as lauded as having value.
Encyclopedia wrote:
I reject the whole determinism philosophy. The "clockwork universe" is a myth, physical law is only statistically deterministic anyway.
Statistical determinism is determinism as has already been brought up. It is essentially clockwork.Quote:
We're something else. An order higher than animals and higher than mere matter. I don't know how much free will animals have, but it's nothing compared to us. Humans have many reflexes that are completely involuntary, but our other actions are choices. The lower animals are probably mostly reflex, with little or no thought. There is evidence that higher animals (ones with significant amounts of brians) think though.
Well, we do not know that we are an order higher, you assume that. You can say that we have bigger brains, but why would something so mechanical lead to something so unmechanical? Not only that, but researchers have also been able to predict our choices seconds before we are aware of making our decision, that does not really show choice as existing much.
Quote:
The seemingly "random" quantum effects of matter could be explained as some kind of limited free will as easily as chance. Just a thought.
Random choices hardly make up free will. In fact, if free will is just random then there is no reason to really think of it so highly at all. Really, all of our societal ideas based upon free will would probably go better within a deterministic framework as that would give people more of a tangible nature that can be altered by things such as encouragement, punishment, etc.
