'Trick Slattery's Blog, page 2
November 7, 2016
On The Practical Importance of the Free Will Debate
Compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree on how the term “free will” should be defined. Rather than focus of specific compatibilist or incompatibilist definitions, Gregg Caruso and Stephen Morris wrote a paper on what is of philosophical and practical importance for the free will debate. That paper is titled:
Their analysis is spot on. The abstract sums up their posi...
September 26, 2016
The Negligence in a Study: It’s OK if ‘My Brain Made Me Do It’
In this post, I want to tell a little story about how a study can be negligent, and due to that negligence assert conclusions that should not be made. That study is titled “It’s OK if ‘my brain made me do it’: People’s intuitions about free will and neuroscientific prediction” byEddy Nahmias, Jason Shepard, and Shane Reuter (2013).
This is not to say the study has no merit at all,or that some conclusion made did not have merit, only that there is a particular conclusion made that is based on...
August 31, 2016
Happy Semantic Shift Day – Define the Non-Existent into Existence!
Today, August 31st, is the best holiday everrrr! Semantic Shift Day is the day that you redefine all things that do not exist in a way that makes it so you can say they do exist!
This holiday started last year, you can read the first post here:
Semantic Shift Day – August 31st
This year let’s spread the word and make this new holiday big.
What can you do?
Post this or something like it on your social media sites or website:
Happy Semantic Shift Day – August 31st
On Semantic Shift Day we re-de...
August 22, 2016
The Important Context of “Could Have Done Otherwise” (for the Free Will Debate)
Some compatibilist (people who define free will so that it is compatible with determinism), when asked the question of whether people “could have done otherwise” given a causally deterministic scenario (note that this discussion does not address indeterminism such as acausal or “probabilistic” events, etc. – which are equally incompatible with the free will of importance), say that “could have” or “could have done otherwise” can be used in different ways. Theyoften address a few different con...
August 1, 2016
The Neglect of the Traditional View of Free Will
In the post titled “Extending a Hand to Philosophical Compatibilists (by a Free Will Skeptic)” I addressed the point that free will compatibilists and free will skeptics often talk past each other and actually quite often agree with each other in some fundamental ways. I point out that the debate between them is, much of the time, mostly if not entirely semantic, that they each define free will differently.
Today I want to address the philosophical traditional view of free will and why the fr...
July 4, 2016
Extending a Hand to Philosophical Compatibilists (by a Free Will Skeptic)
Philosophical (p) compatibilists believe that free will and causal determinism are “compatible” with each other. They do this by defining the term “free will” in a way that is indeed compatible with determinism. If you have read my blog you will see that I have criticized compatibilism, but that it is always asemantic criticism about the problems with defining “free will” in the way that (p) compatibilists do. I’ve even vehemently opposed certain compatibilist thoughts and attitudes.
With th...
June 20, 2016
Newbie Defense of Free Will #1 – “Unpredictability”
I’ve had lots and lots of online debates on the free will topic. I can often tell how new someone is to the topic when I see their initial defense of free will. If they take a compatibilist view with a nuanced semantic, I know that these people are not new to the topicand that we will probably just be debating semantics.
There are a fewgive-aways, however, of someone being a newbie. I’d like to point them out because it is helpful if you are a free will skeptic who is talking or debating with...
June 6, 2016
Free Will Illusionism vs. Disillusionism
There are some people who understand that free will is an illusion, but at the same time say that we should keep the general population within that illusion – or rather, not educate them out of it. This stems from a concern over people learning that they do not have free will, but at the same time taking it to wrongheaded conclusions about fatalism, defeatism, futility, and so on. Ideas that can oftenhave bad consequences.
They might cite studies that were done which create a temporary confus...
May 16, 2016
“Free Will” is an Umbrella Term
The term “free will” is an umbrella term that has a whole lot of added abilitiesunder it that cannot be easily partitioned away from the minds of the majority. It is a termthat is simply too baggage laden. This means that it can be used in a narrow way, but those narrow ways do not remove the excess metaphysical abilities that are often inherent in the term.
One of the waysin which somecompatibilists (people who think free will and determinism are compatible) try to partition away the baggage...
May 2, 2016
Free Will Assumptions in Bell’s Theorem?
Warning: This “free will” post is for those interested in quantum mechanics, and who have a general understanding of the field and terms used within it.
If there was one theorem that has driven physicists to accept an indeterministic model of quantum mechanics the most, Bell’s theorem would be on the top pedestal. With the acceptance of such a theorem, certain quantum events simply cannot have a local “hidden variable”. This means that if one is to suggest a cause that we cannot “observe” for...
