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Comment on Seeking advice: Best electric piano's for (well) under $1000 in ~music
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Comment on Anyone want to talk philosophy? in ~talk
Greebo Link ParentI'm normally not a fan of Sam Harris or the "new horsemen" for many reasons, but I do think that Sam provided a really helpful allegory for providing a 'man on the Clapham omnibus' approach to...I'm normally not a fan of Sam Harris or the "new horsemen" for many reasons, but I do think that Sam provided a really helpful allegory for providing a 'man on the Clapham omnibus' approach to determinism;
Think about your thoughts. When you're acting, thoughts are emergent and simply pop into your head. You did not premeditate the thought, and if you did, that premeditation was also emergent. These thoughts are always linked with your prior experience, and as a result, we seem to have a pretty water-tight case for determinism.
This may not seem like a rigid analytical philosophical argument, but we're provided here with a unique insight into a competing intuition, which is very very important - views that purport agency in the free will debate tend to start with a powerful base phenomena of "perception of choice". At least, this is how many get to those further conclusions. Here, we are given an equally solid "feeling" that we can build a theory upon.
The thing is, Free Will isn't an isolated philosophical problem. The larger question comes to down to more metaphysical fundamentals such as the concept of causation. Agency gets thrown into even murkier water when we also approach metaphysical problems like the idea of a singular and persistent 'self' which, I'm sure many would agree, is equally questionable.
Many of the problems we seem to have with digesting the problem of "free will" come from this agent-centric way of thinking. The reality is this is a physical problem with a physical solution and the initial intuition we start from, when defending a conception of human free will, is largely emotive. The "feel" of a choice is enough to inform many people's entire argument.
I've kind of rambled here and the reality is that I'm not really sure if I fall into the camp of a determinist or not. But I do think that Free Will provides a great starting point for delving into some of the meatier metaphysical questions floating around, and by getting closer to good philosophy there, we're likely to get better philosophy about our agency in the future.
Yo as a home pianist, I recommend the Yamaha P-45. Nothing fancy but the sound is surprisingly good and the action is wonderful. Definitely gets my vote.