Determinism and Free Will Part (1/3)

Part 1; Section 1: Philosophy, Freedom and Faith


Series Bibliography
Books
"The Science Before Science" by Anthony Rizzi
"Aristotle for Everybody" by Mortimer Adler
"From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again" Etienne Gilson
"The Unity of Philosophical Experience" Etienne Gilson
"Being Logical" D.Q. McInery
"Aquinas" Edward Feser
"The Last Superstition" Edward Feser
"Philosophy of Mind" Edward Feser
"Real Essentialism" David S. Oderberg
The Works of Aristotle
The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas
"Darwinian Fairytales" David Stove
"The Historical Reliability of the Gospels" Craig Blomberg
"The Real Jesus" Luke Timothy Johnson
"Christian Revelation and the Completion of the Aristotelian Revolution" by Patrick Madigan S.J.
"Personalism" by Emmanuel Mounier
"The Erotic Phenomena" Jean-Luc Marion
"The Faith of the Early Fathers" (3 volumes)
"The Problem of God"
"The Abolition of Man" C.S. Lewis
"Miracles" C.S. Lewis
"Man, Economy and State" Murray Rothbard
"Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature" Murray Rothbard
"The Law" Frederick Bastiat
"Envy" Helmut Schoeck
"Economics for Real People" Gene Calahan
"The Church and the Market" Thomas Woods
"How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" Thomas Woods
"Life of Christ" Fulton Sheen
"To Know Christ Jesus" F.J. Sheed
"Theology and Sanity" F.J. Sheed
"This Tremendous Lover" Eugene Boylan
"Orthodoxy" G.K. Chesteron
"The Everlasting Man" G.K. Chesterton
"Theology of the Body" Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II)
"Introduction to Christianity" Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Bendict XVI)
"Truth and Tolerance" Ratzinger
"Jesus of Nazareth" Ratzinger
"Finding Darwin's God" Kenneth Miller
"Evolution" Donald Prothero
"Abusing Science" the Case Against Creationism" Phillip Kitcher


Audio Lectures (by the Teaching Company)
"Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages" Thomas Williams
"Philosophy of the Mind" Patrick Grimm
"Free Will & Determinism" Shaun Nichols
"Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates and Aristotle" Robert Bartlett
"Natural Law and Human Nature" Joseph Koterski S.J.
(by the Modern Scholars company)
"Discovering the Philosopher in You" Colin McGinn
"Plato & Aristotle: The Genesis of Western Thought" Aryeh Kosman
All By Thomas Madden-("The Decline and Fall of Rome" "God Wills It! A History of the Crusades" "Empire of Gold: The History of the Byzantine Empire" "Heaven of Heresy" "The Catholic Church in the Modern Age" "Christianity at the Crossroads: The Reformation" "From Jesus to Christianity" "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic: A History of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages" )

Internet Resources
Philosophy-
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/
http://www.edwardfeser.com/
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/
http://plato.stanford.edu/
http://radicalacademy.com/adiphilmedieval.htm
http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/thomism.htm
http://mises.org/
http://www.acton.org/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• philosophy
• freedom
• faith
• God
• logic
• metaphysics
• liberty
• libertarianism
• emergentism
• yt:stretch=16:9

[unseenstrings]

The argument of Determinism vs free will commits the either-or fallacy, since disproving determinism does not prove free will. Therefore, one cannot logically argue for or against the idea since the idea is fallacious from the get-go. Now, historically free will has been defined as the ability to reach a decision without restraint or in spite of physical or divine necessity or causal law. This means the argument should be free will vs God's will; or free will vs physical necessity or causal law.

[unseenstrings]

Why do you say that when the babe needs to defecate, it is because of awareness, but when a pup needs do defecate it is because of instinct? Is the pup rewarded for pooping outside and scolded for pooping on the floor? How is the babe treated differently? Tell me how the internal mechanisms of control would differ once a babe has been "potty-trained" and the pup has been "house-broken"? Can your "mechanisms of control" be scientifically examined or is one of them attributed to such BS as a soul?

[unseenstrings]

@zzap999, apparently you're confusing extinct with instinct. And you seem very confused on other matters too.

Maybe you can tell me how a newborn knows to suckle just like a puppy knows to suckle? Does one teach the babe to do so? Or is it instinctive?

Better yet, define instinct for me and define awareness. Can instinct be modified to allow the organism to adapt to new and different circumstances? Or is instinct like gears interlocked together with only one possible type of movement?

[zzap999]

@unseenstrings Your confusing awareness with extinct. Humans worry and fear their limited life on earth because they are aware of it from a religious and philosophical level. Humans even put meaning to life and death in the belief in an afterlife. Look at the ancient Egyptians and Hindus. Animals are amoral and only respond to their senses. Humanizing animals is a delusion invented by confused human beings.

[unseenstrings]

You make many assumptions based on what you have been taught. But what if you'd never been taught language? What if you'd been raised by a Bonobo mother? How close is human nature to the nature of the nonhuman animal? What aspects of your so called "self" are genetic, and what aspects are learned?

Have you ever heard about the forbidden experiment? Psammetichus I (664-610 BCE) tried it. So did Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century. Others have too.

Man made language made man.

[unseenstrings]

The dog is aware that the tail connected to his body is his tail. But he doesn't have the words we use to describe that relationship. He only has feeling, associative memory, and imagination, which collectively--together with mirror neurons--are the cognitive foundation of our complex language.

Spoken language gave us an evolutionary advantage. Written language helped us accumulate knowledge to the point of building pyramids and shortly thereafter, venturing into space

Self and I are words

[unseenstrings]

@zzap999, dogs are aware of a car killing one of their own. And they become aware of their own mortality when near a busy road. And dogs are also aware of some things that humans are not. That is one reason we've kept them around for so long to help protect us. Elephants have indicated that they are aware of death. Children who've never learned language show no more awareness of death than any other intelligent animal.

"Self" and "I" are words. Words are a language that is spoken or written.

[zzap999]

@unseenstrings Does a dog have an awareness of it's own mortality? Does a dog worry that within 15 years(7 years for Great Danes) that they will eventually die? Only human beings do because humans have a self, an "I", and thus a soul. So it's more than words. The self is an actual thing.

[unseenstrings]

Nevertheless, a word is not a being. The word "being" is a sound/symbolic representation used by humans to mean "a living thing that has (or can develop) the ability to act or function independently." (WordNet 2.0 via DICT.org)

And one of the definitions of "self" is "a being regarded as having personality." Self can also mean "a being that can consciously reflect on his own existence," which most likely would require a complex language only known to be possessed by the human animal.

[unseenstrings]

@zzap999, very few YouTubers have degrees in philosophy. But there are lots of philosopher-wanna-bes. I'm not one of them.

I didn't say the self was a feeling. I said the self to a human has the same significance as the feeling a dog gets when he looks at his tail. He knows the tail belongs to himself. But he doesn't have the language necessary to put his feeling into words.

When a person looks in the mirror, he feels the person looking back is a reflection of himself. Humans do have words