[ExI] Humans losing freewill

[William Flynn Wallace]

"Instinct", "intuition" and "gut feeling" can be defined quite easily.
Stathis

Great - I challenge you to do it.  A problem with your definition of gut
feeling is that it cannot be objectively measured.  Only the person who is
acting, he says, on a gut feeling, can call it that, and self-report on
feelings is not scientific data.
No objective measurement, no proper definition.  For use in science, that
is.

People use these words over and over and when challenged cannot properly
define them.  I have asked thousands of students to define them and all
they can do is to offer synonyms, which of course is circular.  They just
want to play "oh you know what I mean".  So I challenge them with 'love'.
Does everyone mean exactly the same thing when they use that term?  No,
they say.  Then what does it mean when you say it?  Perhaps something
different from what your partner thinks you mean?  Yes, perhaps.  Very very
fuzzy.  (When a female hears "I love you" she may think "exclusive
relationship",which is sometimes not what the guy meant when he said it.)

bill w

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 5:38 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
wrote:

> "Instinct", "intuition" and "gut feeling" can be defined quite easily.
> They are not logically problematic, even if they are wrong. For example, a
> "gut feeling" is a belief not fully based on rational evidence. We can
> argue that we should, or should not, follow a gut feeling, we can do
> research to see whether following a gut feeling leads to a good outcome,
> speculate on whether people have access to subconscious information that
> manifests in a gut feeling, and so on. But "free will" is nonsensical
> unless you use it in the trivial sense of "I choose to do what I want to
> do, if I wanted to do otherwise I would have chosen otherwise, and I'm not
> sure what I'm going to do until I've actually done it". That definition
> works, but it's not what most people have in mind when they use the term.
>
> On 21 November 2016 at 09:52, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I can say nothing about "free will" because I don't know what it means.​
>>  john
>>
>> I do love someone who wants their words defined properly.  Yet, in
>> everyday conversation, I'll bet that you use words like 'instinct',
>> 'intuition', 'gut feelings' and more and cannot give a proper, that is to
>> say, a more scientific definition than is usual among the insufficiently
>> educated.
>>
>> And if you don't, then welcome to my club!
>>
>> bill w
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 3:29 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 3:43 PM, William Flynn Wallace <
>>> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> ​> ​
>>>> In the absence of compelling data, we assume that a person meant to do
>>>> what they did, and use that as the basis for a legal decision.
>>>> ​ ​
>>>> Determinism fits in here too:  we have to assume it in criminal cases,
>>>>
>>>
>>> ​Well yes. Nobody is saying that events never have causes, just that
>>> they don't always.
>>> The only useful purpose for criminal law is to stop someone who hurt
>>> somebody else from doing it again and to deter others from doing something
>>> similar; that is to say criminal law causes people to behave in certain
>>> ways and civilization would be impossible without it.
>>>  ​
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ​> ​
>>>> just like free will, even though both constructs are arguable.
>>>
>>>
>>> ​I can say nothing about "free will" because I don't know what it means.​
>>>
>>>
>>> ​> ​
>>>> When something better comes along, we may have to change
>>>> our way of thinking about people and re-write our entire legal
>>>> system.  But for now, we have no good alternatives.
>>>>
>>>
>>> ​How about treating it as irrelevant if a person is a moral monster
>>> because he had bad genes or a bad environment and instead punish him if and
>>> only if doing so will prevent him from doing bad stuff again and or deter
>>> others. ​If you can explain why
>>> ​somebody is a monster that doesn't stop him from being a monster, and I
>>> don't care if he's insane or not.​
>>>
>>> John K Clark
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
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