if a tree fall in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, did it make a sound?
answer: YES, humans are not so important that things don't make sounds if we are not around. it makes a sounds!
stupidest question ever.
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If a tree fell in a forest and NOTHING was there to hear it, no bees, wolves.. bears no nothing, then it wouldn't be sound. It wouldn't make a sound it would just make vibrations, which our brains and ears etc let us hear. There are still sounds to be heard and if you were there you'd hear something, but thats the point.
I think one of the main lessons to learn is not to proclaim your belief as fact, a problem which has shaped society for thousands of years. Only by understanding that we do not, and can never know everything, can we achieve. The greatest philosophers understood how ignorant they were; and they themselves are often perceived as the most clever, along side the most famous of scientists.
sound is vibrations of air that are there no matter if anyone is around to hear it, but I can see how that is debatable.
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I basically try to think of how utilitarianistic my actions will be, and grade someone else's actions based on utilitarianism. It's kind of redundant and makes you think "well duh", the school of thought, but it helps you think of everyone as having an important role and feelings. I don't formally study it, but I like its idea of ethical equality.
God and anything supernatural cannot be said to exist, because the ideas themselves have no possible link to material reality. There is no mechanism for how material existence can interact with the supernatural.
Free will does not exist; it is merely a religious and cultural concept designed to scapegoat, and say that a person is the problem, rather that the problem is the problem.
Life has no meaning; life is life. You make your own meaning.
Science has completely replaced philosophy. Modern physics, its advancements, and questions have gone far beyond philosophical thought. Questions of human nature are mere psychological and biological questions. Mathematics, including symbolic logic, is the true "philosophy."
Of course, reading philosophy and studying the history is endlessly fascinating, filled with inspiration, and tells the story of the advancement of human thought.
Spoiler: the greatest mind of all time was Isaac Newton. This bad mother****er was the greatest scientist of all time.
Ha ha... maybe you should spend 10 years doing it before embarrassing yourself like this.
I don't understand why people deny free will and the reasoning behind it, mentioning 'quantum mechanics" doesn't prove your point i'm afraid, all though many people think it does. However i see what you mean about things being decided when the universe began; when i throw a dice it will be a certain number, its not luck, its just the variables of speed and spin and bounce etc, but if you knew these you could calculate the dice. So its not luck, its ignorance.
As I've come to understand it, the issue of free will is one of many unresolvable problems. There's a lot of those in philosophy. It seems most philosophers touch on free will to some extent. It's more of a leftover issue from the days of medieval philosophy. One of the multitude of relics of Christianity. Outside of Christian philosophy there's really no place for long discussions on free will. It's not that it does or does not exist, that's missing the point entirely. Philosophy isn't about showing whether or not something is true; that's the field of science. Those that try to reduce philosophy to science don't have any understanding of what philosophy actually is. Rather, when treating with the issue of free will, one must see how well the concept itself holds up. If it fails to stand on its own, it needs to adapt or be dropped. The most satisfactory answer I've come across is just to drop the issue as pointless.
A good discussion on why this (and other epistemological issues) shouldn't concern us can be found in chapter 2 of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. If you really want to understand these sorts of philosophical arguments you're simply going to have to read... and read a lot. One's personal beliefs and opinions aren't really very important in philosophical discussions most of the time. Understanding multiple ways at addressing or thinking about problems, on the other hand, is at philosophy's core.
I think 'free will' is getting a bad wrap here... There seem to be more people arguing against it.
So I'll argue for it, in this case:
Sure you can assume that the neurons in your brain force you to make specific choices, based on circumstances of matter involvement... but concluding that is just as likely as 'free will'.
Neither can really be proved, it's a concept much like religion... it's mostly about perspective.
Likewise, you could also assume that because humans have 'sentience' and an understanding of their existence, they are capable of adjusting the neurons in their brains to make 'choices', thus 'free will'.
Also, I don't think it would be correct to say that the concept of free will relates to Christianity, or any other religion. The philosophy of free will simply is just another philosophy... while people can tie it to religion, at no point does it have to be exclusively part of one.
For example: An atheist could easily believe in the concept of 'free will' simply by choosing to believe that the choices he makes are ultimately decided by himself, through the fundamental nature of sentience, rather than at a much larger cosmic level.
And in the end.... does it really matter? Either way, humans live their lives the way they choose to live them... whether the choices are just an illusion or not, simply does not affect the way they perceive them.
I personally want to be a Philosopher when I'm older, Philosophy is what made us what we are today, and Philosophy isn't so specific, it allows us to be free to answer ANY questions.
Spoiler: the greatest mind of all time was Isaac Newton. This bad mother****er was the greatest scientist of all time.
I was planning on just reading this thread and moving on, but this little snippet caught me and I had to respond.
Isaac Newton was a great scientist and mathematician, but he receives far too much credit that should go to a brilliant man by the name of Gottfried Leibniz (to which we owe almost all the names we use in calculus, if not all)
The greatest mind would probably fall on Euclid or Bernoulli.
answer: YES, humans are not so important that things don't make sounds if we are not around. it makes a sounds!
stupidest question ever.
*there may or may not be cake
sound is vibrations of air that are there no matter if anyone is around to hear it, but I can see how that is debatable.
*there may or may not be cake
love=pain.
happy=fake.
life=stupid.
Ha ha... maybe you should spend 10 years doing it before embarrassing yourself like this.
As I've come to understand it, the issue of free will is one of many unresolvable problems. There's a lot of those in philosophy. It seems most philosophers touch on free will to some extent. It's more of a leftover issue from the days of medieval philosophy. One of the multitude of relics of Christianity. Outside of Christian philosophy there's really no place for long discussions on free will. It's not that it does or does not exist, that's missing the point entirely. Philosophy isn't about showing whether or not something is true; that's the field of science. Those that try to reduce philosophy to science don't have any understanding of what philosophy actually is. Rather, when treating with the issue of free will, one must see how well the concept itself holds up. If it fails to stand on its own, it needs to adapt or be dropped. The most satisfactory answer I've come across is just to drop the issue as pointless.
A good discussion on why this (and other epistemological issues) shouldn't concern us can be found in chapter 2 of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. If you really want to understand these sorts of philosophical arguments you're simply going to have to read... and read a lot. One's personal beliefs and opinions aren't really very important in philosophical discussions most of the time. Understanding multiple ways at addressing or thinking about problems, on the other hand, is at philosophy's core.
So I'll argue for it, in this case:
Sure you can assume that the neurons in your brain force you to make specific choices, based on circumstances of matter involvement... but concluding that is just as likely as 'free will'.
Neither can really be proved, it's a concept much like religion... it's mostly about perspective.
Likewise, you could also assume that because humans have 'sentience' and an understanding of their existence, they are capable of adjusting the neurons in their brains to make 'choices', thus 'free will'.
Also, I don't think it would be correct to say that the concept of free will relates to Christianity, or any other religion. The philosophy of free will simply is just another philosophy... while people can tie it to religion, at no point does it have to be exclusively part of one.
For example: An atheist could easily believe in the concept of 'free will' simply by choosing to believe that the choices he makes are ultimately decided by himself, through the fundamental nature of sentience, rather than at a much larger cosmic level.
And in the end.... does it really matter? Either way, humans live their lives the way they choose to live them... whether the choices are just an illusion or not, simply does not affect the way they perceive them.
And that, my friends, is why I choose to believe in the philosophy of Subjectivism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism
All things are subjective to me. Nothing has true meaning, it is all perception. There are no truths but the ones we hold. Truth is irrelevent.
You have just read this. You are also manually breathing.
I was planning on just reading this thread and moving on, but this little snippet caught me and I had to respond.
Isaac Newton was a great scientist and mathematician, but he receives far too much credit that should go to a brilliant man by the name of Gottfried Leibniz (to which we owe almost all the names we use in calculus, if not all)
The greatest mind would probably fall on Euclid or Bernoulli.