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@keithprosser
Perhaps you are right but my experience is what has made me the sort of person that thinks over a proposition before accepting it. Unless I somehow chose to have those experiences then it hardly matters.
Perhaps you are right but my experience is what has made me the sort of person that thinks over a proposition before accepting it. Unless I somehow chose to have those experiences then it hardly matters.
Let me test if SM is right.I have two heads.My guess is you thought that was a lie; straight way you felt it wasn't true. But how did you decide it wasn't true? Did you examine the evidence and determine it wasn't true? If so, can you outline the algorithm you employed?I can guess that the agorithm relies on fitting new information into an existing schema. In your brain's schema people have one head - so somehow you retrieved that piece of information (ignoring millions of irrelvant pieces of information such what is the capital of paris), detected an anomaly and rejected the new information that I have two heads.
That is very reasonable sounding, but I have no idea it is really how brains work!It is almost (but not quite) a pardox that brains have no idea how they work.
It is only a reliable method if my experiences are "real" and I can think of no mechanism for test8ng this proposition. It is the best avenue available to me but that is not necessarily the same as being reliable.
(Assuming that holding true beliefs is valued)
Exists as a metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concept and n not as any actual, realized occupied space coin.How about multi-dimensional-coin. Is that better?
Reece #112--How about multi-dimensional-coin. Is that better?
8 days later
Everyone thinks they hold true beliefs. I paradoxically both believe that everything I believe to be true is true and simultaneously believe that at least one thing I believe to be true must be false. What I value is the scientific method as the most reliable method of separating fact from falsehood. Provided of course that our observations accurately reflect reality.
I think we can be more precise. We can only be certain of definitions; we can be certain there are no married batchelors because we have defined 'batchelor' in a way that makes it is so.Certainty about practically anything may be beyond human epistemology.
I believe in metaphysical determinism.
For similar reasons that secularmerlin outlined previously, or for different ones?
My lack of belief is based on the lack of evidence. The universe gets on just fine without freewill. Occam's razor demands that if we already have an observable explanation for an event (say cause and effect) that we dismiss any extraneous and unprovable explanation (such as freewill). If freewill does not exist then we would expect to see no evidence whatever and that is precisely what we see.
Reece: Belief in free will stems from experience or observation; it doesn't stem from materialistic explanation.
KeithP: Belief in 'no freewill' doesn't stem from experience or observation; it stems from the lack of a materialistic explanation of free will.
I get that... but first we have to identify the process people actually use, not the process they think or say they use!I am more interested in first wondering whether the process one uses to make their conclusions is a sound process rather than whether the conclusion itself is sound.