Sculptor: Will they??
Tell me then, why did the USA not spend the trillion dollars (they spent on 20 years of war) taking to the Taliban to get them to give up BIn Laden?
Why did they not provide a trillion in aid, with conditions about letting girls go to school?
Why did they choose to loot the tax payer in a 20 years war that left 150,000 civilians and 3000 service people dead?
They had that choice. Afghanistan could have been transformed into a modern looking state.
But the US chose to spend 20 years to replace the Taliban with one that was more aggressive and better equipped.
And why is it that police, chose to shoot rather than go to the trouble of arresting, charging and filling out lots of paper work?
Why was Iraq invaded on a series of lies?
What motivated the USA to support a dictatorship in Vietnam and wage a useless war that brutalised 3 nations in SE Asia and an entire generation of American youth?
Money is the answer.
Peacegirl: What is done is done. The US did what they thought was best at the time. Woulda shoulda coulda doesn’t help here other than trying to correct any mistakes in hindsight given new information. I’m not sure how long you’ve been following this thread, but there is no way you can use what has happened in the past and automatically conclude there’s no way things can be different in the future.
That’s rubbish.
“The US”, who the fuck is “The US”?
Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush wanted blood, and the people were baying for it.
It did not matter who was going to die for their thirst, just so long as they were making plenty of money feeding the military /industrial complex.
Next comes Obama who drops the dead donkey that was Iraq, ( the complete lack of credibility and the insurgency made that untenable), but being president he thought he could “WIN” in Afghanistan. Trouble is he could not define “win” to his chiefs and so they waged war against random people and killed a further 70,000 civilians including 5,000 children in Pakistan alone.
You objections are bollocks. Coulda woulda houlda? Are you kidding?
We know the future from what has happened in the past.
It’s only 20 years ago FFS.
And the US were there until last month.
YOUR CLIAM "But this doesn’t change the fact that when there is a better alternative than depending on violence to make money, humans will choose that option."
One example invalidate that cliam
What have you got? Nothing
To be fair to peacegirl and her author, the author is proposing that a certain discovery about the nature of humans, if understood and accepted, would precipitate a revolution in consciousness such that, in the future, no one would desire to strike a first blow against another, and as a consequence, no one would desire to retaliate for the simple reason that retaliation would be unnecessary — no first blow, no need for retaliation. The argument then is to be considered on its own merits, for if it is correct, then we can’t inductively predict future human behavior (post-discovery) from past human behavior (pre-discovery).
The point is that people should evaluate the author’s argument on its own merits, and not by reference to an extant world that the author says will pass out of existence if his discovery is universally understood and accepted. My aim here is to address the argument on its own merits, which I will continue to do.
Of course, we still have no definitive way in which to determine if any definition that anyone gives to free will is one that they were actually able to come up with…freely?
Unless perhaps we say only what we were never able to not say. And, in the manner in which some construe hard determinism, there is no inside and outside force…it’s all just the human brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter regarding anything that we think, feel, say or do.
As for example when we dream. In the dream we might think that we choose to act as we do without the imposition of an outside force. But then when we wake up we grasp that this “choice” was nothing more than our brain going about its thing chemically and neurologically.
But then perhaps back to this: You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want. Your motivations and desires and knowledge and all your other mental states wholly intertwined in the only possible reality.
Free will doesn’t exist. Compatibilism makes no sense.
Brian Hines from the Church of the Churchless website
Okay, so what are Paul and Sam and the neuroscientists saying here? That everything they think and feel and say and do in the way of examining and then passing judgment on free will and compatibilism is in itself but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?
That’s always the tricky part for me. Here he is defending Harris defending his assessment of compatibilism and, what, acknowledging in turn that they are in exactly the same boat as those who defend compatibilism are in? Neither of them able to actually opt to say something other than what they must say?
This part:
Given how I understand determinism, there is no “have-it-both-ways” here. There is only how the free will advocates, the hard determinism advocates and the compatibilism advocates must “have it” given that their brains – all their brains – are hard-wired into the laws of nature such that there can be no exceptions.
Unless and until neuroscientists are able to demonstrate that in fact in regard to the matter that comprises the human brain, “I” is the exception.
Then bringing these abstractions out into the world of human interactions revolving around “my thing” here: connecting the dots between determinism, compatibilism and moral responsibility. And explaining your conclusions to Mary faced with an unwanted pregnancy.
I read part of it and it only says that belief in free will or belief in no free will both have benefits when it comes to feelings of moral responsibility.
It’s not a revolution in consciousness. The phrase “revolution in consciousness” sounds new age. Nothing about our consciousness changes. We are the same people, but now we have information that can change the direction we’re going. You are correct that, as a consequence of the corollary to determinism (no blame), this will cause man to veer in a new direction, preventing the first blow from ever being struck. No first blow, no need for retaliation. You’re also right that this knowledge can inductively predict future human behavior based on the accuracy of the conclusions drawn.
There’s nothing tricky about it. They had to say what they said obviously. That doesn’t mean we can’t grow and learn from each other, and change our opinion about things. The “I” that you refer to cannot be anything other than determined, if determinism is true, which it is. But your definition is fallacious, period. I will say this over and over, which you have completely ignored. We can make choices (which gives us the feeling of freedom, which is why we say we did something of our own free will). This is the free will that compatibilists believe is compatible with determinism. But it’s not the free will that is part of this debate, which is being able to have done otherwise. They are using a definition of free will that doesn’t apply except in a colloquial sense. When I say I did it of my own free will, I don’t mean I actually have freedom of the will.
There ARE no exceptions, but the “I” you keep referring to can make choices. The laws of matter CANNOT make you choose anything AGAINST YOUR WILL. You keep playing this word game (that’s all it is) as if nature (the puppeteer) is pulling all the strings EVEN IF YOU DON’T AGREE. This is flawed thinking.
Mary can choose whatever she thinks is best. There is no moral code to tell her what to do. You’re so caught up on this word “morality.” What if there is no morality at all? Morality implies judgement by others. What if we remove the word, and people become more responsible? Then what? In a case like this; it’s her body, and it’s her baby. No woman wants to be in a position of having to abort, but she will do what is right by her. It’s no one else’s business but hers.
As soon as you have people interacting, you are going to have different ideas, goals, actions bumping into each other. That requires setting up rules to so that everyone knows how to play the game and the game remains fair.
In the case of Mary’s abortion, there are other parties, the father for example, who have an interest in the abortion.
In my country, abortion is publicly funded. That means taxpayers have a stake in how the money is spent and therefore a stake in what Mary is doing. It’s not surprising that anti-abortionists would not be happy about paying for Mary’s abortion.
As soon as you have people interacting, you are going to have different ideas, goals, actions bumping into each other. That requires setting up rules to so that everyone knows how to play the game and the game remains fair.
Peacegirl: The game is not fair if there is moral judgment in a no free will, no blame world. I know you cannot get a full picture as to why letting go of moral judgment (we are talking about a new world) actually prevents the very conduct that this judgment is trying to prevent unsuccessfully.
Phyllo: In the case of Mary’s abortion, there are other parties, the father for example, who have an interest in the abortion.
In my country, abortion is publicly funded. That means taxpayers have a stake in how the money is spent and therefore a stake in what Mary is doing. It’s not surprising that anti-abortionists would not be happy about paying for Mary’s abortion.
Peacegirl: There are all kinds of conflicts that wouldn’t even come up in this new world. This is the difficulty because you are presupposing that this moral judgment will still exist. From your vantage point, it’s hard to imagine an environment where there would be no moral judgment yet an increase in responsibility, the opposite of what most people believe would occur.
Are you trying to imply that a man should have control over a woman’s body; or are you implying that a woman is not capable of taking into account the wishes and needs of the potential father??
Anti-abortionist have their say, and the government makes it rules. If Mary does not like it then she can cross state lines and find an abortion elsewhere. But at the end of the say it is Mary that has to either go through the trauma of abortion; either legally ot illegally OR carry a foetus and be responsibile for its upkeep for at least 16 years.
She might want to listen to the nay sayiers but it is easy to have an opinion but not so easy to carry an unwanted foetus.
Not sure you have added anything except to signal your misogyny.
Okay, but my exactly seems to be at odds with…yours? And certainly at odds with peacegirl’s, phyllo’s and pood’s.
Mine starts with an ineffable intertwining of the educated and the wild ass guess assumption that in a determined universe each of our exactlys is only as it ever could have been. Given “the gap”.
It might be “exactly”, exactly or “exactly”.
Then the part where, in regard to moral responsibility, the ontological – teleological? – nature of exactly becomes applicable to Mary aborting her unborn zygote/embryo/fetus.
As in, “exactly what is her moral responsibility” after it is shredded into oblivion?
Thanks in advance.
