chownah wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2017 2:05 am
mal4mac wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 3:54 pm
chownah wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:10 pm
At time mark 0:30 harris says that everything you think and do arises from an ocean of prior causes. This seems to be pretty much the basis of his point of view on the matter of free will. If this is the basis then he is making a huge error in logic....he is assuming what he is trying to prove.
Is he making a point based on logic? He might just be stating a commonly accepted hypothesis. Of course you can doubt what he says, but then you need to point to something that is *without doubt* not part of the ocean.
Take harris's logical approach to the subject out of the presentation and what is left?
You look at the crows in the field and see they are all black, then you make the hypothesis that all crows are black. Would you call this logic? OK maybe it's inductive logic, I'm a physicist by training so I'm not an expert on logic, but I usually take people to mean "strict deductive logic" when they something is logical or not (E.g., Socrates is a man,all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal would be deductive logic.)
Sam's "logic" is of the "all crows are black" variety - all phenomena look like they are caused, therefore causality rules. When something has looked uncaused ("comet in the sky...") it has eventually been shown to be caused ("big rock in orbit comes close to sun...".) So it's reasonable to explore the feeling that we have free will to see if it's actually caused. In fact, there have been experiments (Libet?) that show the nervous system moves to make a choice BEFORE you actually feel you are making your "free" choice. So the case that there is no free will is receiving strong scientific backing, maybe not clinching, but good enough for me and Sam. In actuality I don't think about this much - free will or not, who cares, what does it matter? Go and meditate, go read a novel, both are a lot more fun than chewing on unanswerable, unimportant questions like this (unless you are in the mood for a chew, which I am once a month or so...)
chownah wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2017 2:05 am
I reallly do not think that "free will is an illusion" is a commonly accepted hypothesis.
I think it is amongst psychologists who work in this area, and the greatest scientists/thinkers with broad ranging minds. Prove me wrong - find me a big name who believes in free will.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 08181.html
chownah wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:10 pm
I'm not sure whether even the existence of an ocean of prior causes can be proven ...
It doesn't need to be proven! It's a scientific hypothesis. If you want to disprove it you need to find a counter example. If I say "all crows are black" then you need to find a white crow to "disprove" my hypothesis. So to "disprove" Sam you need to find a non causal event. Sam doesn't need to show that *all* events are caused - that would be asking too much of Sam. If Sam had to prove that all crows are black he would have to find every crow in the world, look in every space that might contain a crow, every planet in the Universe that just might have crows. But there might be a crow in space, so he actually has to look in every crow sized space in the universe, before he could say "all crows are black for sure! You might then say, "one white crow was just born near Alpha Centauri", so Sam actually has to be omnipotent to see every crow sized space to see if it contains a crow now!
chownah wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2017 12:10 pm
Nothing can be proven.....that is the best lesson this video imparts I think...why not just relax and say "I don't know"?......after all nothing can be proven anyway.
Even if something is not known for sure, uncertain knowledge is often useful. Imagine you have a million dollar quiz question. "Are crows black or white?" Would you say, "Nothing is certain, I don't know", or "Black!"?