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Originally Posted by But
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
Quote:
Originally Posted by But
That obviously depends on what you mean by free will. I thought the statement "there can be no conflict between what we call determinism and what we style free will" doesn't make sense.
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So, like peacegirl, you believe that free will and determinism are necessarily incompatible? If not, please clarify; I'm having hard time drawing any other conclusion from your statement here. |
Your statement seemed to imply that Swartz made an argument that proves there is no conflict between determinism and free will, no matter what we define free will to mean. That's trivially nonsense, so I was trying to find out what you really meant. |
As I've explained, Swartz denies that there is a necessary conflict between free will and determinism. That is why I characterized his stance as
eliminativist as opposed to compatibilist, though I don't think he himself ever uses that term. But I think it's what he means when he says that trying to reconcile free will and determinism is as unnecessary as trying to reconcile doubts and itches. Obviously I am summarizing his views here; but he has many articles on the Internet and an entire book,
here, on the subject, which you can read for free. Unlike peacegirl I would never insist that you read the entire book before discussing the topic; but if you don't want to read it, you'll just have to follow my summations and whether I do them well or badly, or persuasively or unpersuasively, is up to you.
I would ask him to participate in this thread, but he did that several years ago at my request at another message board and quickly backed out, deciding (quite correctly and unfortunately I think) that philosophy cannot be done on the Internet.