[ExI] Humans losing freewill

Mon Nov 21 19:49:29 UTC 2016

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 1:55 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> 
>> If your gut feeling turns out to be correct more often than randomness
>> would allow then I can objectively conclude that mental activity
>>  
>> of some sort has probably gone on in your brain to produce it even if you
>> don't consciously know what it is or you are unable to put your reasoning
>> into words. However you're doing it you're coming up with the correct
>> answer more often than not, and that is a objective fact.
>
>

> 
> Your paragraph is entirely correct but it fails to specify just what
> mental process is going on and how you measure it.
>

It doesn't explain how gut feeling does what it does but it does give a
way to measure it, the number of times it turns out to be correct vs the
number of times it turns out to be incorrect.

> > 
> Some people might say that in your paragraph above, the terms gut feeling,
> instinct, and intuition might be used interchangeably, and that does not
> help us at all to understand each one separately, if indeed they are
> separate processes.
>

Intuition is just a more polite word for gut feeling,

and instinct is the hard wired ROM in our DNA.

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.

That's the trouble with definitions, all the definitions in the dictionary
are made of words which also have definitions in the dictionary that are
also made of words, and round and round we go. The thing that breaks us out
of that circularity and the reason language is not meaningless is due to
examples from the real world, I point to a large green thing and say "tree"
and you get the idea. And
examples are where lexicographers got the information to write their

dictionary in the first place
.

>
>  in a study we might define intelligence as the score on a standard IQ
> test.

I suppose that's as good a definition as any, 
but much more important than any definition would be an example.
 Intelligence is that quality of mind that Einstein had in greater
abundance than the average man
. If I gave more examples involving
Mozart
, 
Leonardo da Vinci
 and 
Shakespeare
 people who didn't know English would have an even better understanding of
the meaning of the word "intelligence", although they still might not be
able to define it.

  John K Clark 
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