Recent content by Fervent

The person, not the gun or the bullet. Because the person who commits the murder still must choose to commit the murder, being a hired gun doesn't absolve them of that choice. If the person who "hired" the killer stuck a puppet on their hand, the puppet would not then be responsible for the...

These things are value-statements, and such judgments can only belong to a moral agent. So now the universe is making value judgments, in addition to "deciding" your life and making all of your decisions for you? Oh? Some call it taxation. All of these active agent nouns and verbs. Why aren't...

Only because the concept you're expressing is incoherent. I don't think we could evaluate the moral character of mechanical processes, so it matters a lot when we're talking about what it means to be a "good" person. There is no moral or immoral character to the nitrogen cycle, or the diesel...

Perhaps if we're talking about extrinsic conditioning, but in context the discussion was an intrinsic encouragement. So perhaps I should have made it clearer that I was specifically addressing the "you'll use that as an encouragement" rather than a more general understanding of behavior...

This is a distinctly different question from what I asked, which is should a person strive to be a good person? How could they do so if they lack free will? Seems to be a pretty clear difference to me, one involves a moral agent and the other involves a mechanical process. Let me re-write the...

I'm rather ecumenical, in that I don't subscribe to any particular denomination but instead believe that Christ can be found in every truly Trinitarian worship. Belonging to the church is a mystical experience, rather than a worldly one. So my theology is eclectic, I'm comfortable in the...

When you say "you," do you mean specifically me or people in general? Are you saying being a good person isn't important, since you claim free will doesn't exist and it follows that good people will just be good people? There's no reason people should strive to be good people, since they don't...

Oh? You mean I control my own choices in handling such things? Or is it up to the prior conditions over which I have no control? So sayeth Bradskii, master of all knowledge. Seems you've back-tracked here. So should we or shouldn't we?

Welcome to the forum...I must admit, I myself often struggle with thoughts that it might not be real. But in my case that's just the rebelious flesh speaking, rather than my own convictions. I am curious, what specifically is holding you back from believing in Christ? What's your biggest logical...

How's that, exactly? If my basic experiences aren't trustworthy in the case of free will, how can I presume that they are trustworthy when the experiences aren't as close to direct phenomenal experience? How can I trust that my other senses are giving me accurate information, if my internal...

Within philosophy, there are really only two positions on free will as a genuine phenomenon. Libertarian free will, and determinism. Most of the wrangling nowadays is over what it means for us not to have a self-determining free will with regards to human responsibility, not whether or not we...

Compatibilism in philosophy generally isn't about the ontological status of free will, but rather human responsibility persisting in a world where our decisions are causally determined by factors besides ourselves. It's better called "soft determinism" than compatibilism, because it denies free...

Critically examine them based on what? If our experiences are not the foundation of our understanding, how can we hope to move beyond them? What's our basis for examination, if our fundamental experiences might be an illusion? This has nothing to do with my question, or anything that has...

Since we reached the end of that line of inquiry, I have a question for you. If, as you say, free will is an illusion despite our basic experience of making decisions free from constraint, how can we maintain that our experiences are basically trustworthy? If we could be completely mistaken...

Seems to be dogmatic, if the only reason you think the statement should be accepted is on its apparent truth. I'm not sure what you mean by the last sentence, could you explain? Free will can really only be understood in experiential terms, rather than philosophic ones. The experience of making...