Harris and Dennett on free will (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, March 10, 2014, 00:44 (3913 days ago) @ romansh
edited by unknown, Monday, March 10, 2014, 00:58

David But it matters to me and I've made up my mind to my satisfaction and i've voiced my opinion.
> 
> Romansh: This I think is more than fair enough, David.
> What I don't understand is when others voice their opinions it becomes how many angels can dance on a head of a pin?
> 
> For me as you may recall free will has some profoundly changing impacts on my worldview.
> wrt
> morality
> life
> self
> consciousness
> and meaning
> 
> my mind is not made up yet.-Again fair enough for you, but what Harris and Dennett are struggling with has no current answers, like the number of angels. So as with atheism and theism you have to choose sides, or as you and dhw are doing is staying astride the fence and studying in both directions very carefully. And I admire that, though remember I was there also and studied, and made choices. We are all at an illusion and opinion level, but I was moral, and followed a properly useful and ethical life, which has had meaning for me, without settling this issue to the point of absolute truth. Theism and atheism are not absolute truths since there is never an absolute proof. The chasm requiring the leap of faith is always there waiting for you.-Just discovered, this essay is on point. Take a look:-http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/scientism-in-the-arts-and-humanities-"One of the distinguishing characteristics of human beings, however, is that they can distinguish a concept from the reality it describes, can entertain propositions from which they withhold their assent, and so can move judge-like in the realm of ideas, calling each before the bar of rational argument, accepting them and rejecting them regardless of the reproductive cost. And it is not only in science that this attitude of critical reflection is maintained. Matthew Arnold, in his classic collection of essays Culture and Anarchy (1869), famously described culture as "a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits."
 
"Like so many people wedded to a nineteenth-century view of science, which promised scientific explanations for social and cultural phenomena, Dawkins overlooks the nineteenth-century reaction that said: Wait a minute; science is not the only way to pursue knowledge. There is moral knowledge too, which is the province of practical reason; there is emotional knowledge, which is the province of art, literature, and music. And just possibly there is transcendental knowledge, which is the province of religion. Why privilege science, just because it sets out to explain the world? Why not give weight to the disciplines that interpret the world, and so help us to be at home in it?"