On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Brent Meeker<meekerdb.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>> Either way, there is only the epiphenomenal experience of making my
>> mind up...not the actuality of doing so.
>
> I'd say there was the epiphenomenal experience of making up your mind AND the actuality of
> doing so. Your formulation divorces "you" from from everything and leaves "you" as a kind
> of ghost.
Well, that's physicalism for you. I'm not saying that it's my
view...which is why I said "assuming physicalism".
> Brent
> "If you make yourself small enough you can avoid responsibility for everything."
> --- Daniel Dennett, in Elbow Room
Yeah, Dennett just redefines words in new ways so that he can say
something like that and have it mean something entirely different than
it would under common usage. The goal being to convince people that a
deterministic world-view doesn't drastically change anything, and
therefore they shouldn't be alarmed by it. "All the moral and ethical
beliefs you had before are still basically true! (IF you redefine all
the words so that they mean something different than what you took
them to mean before.)"
Every word in your quote, except "for", has to be considered in the
context of Dennett's special terminology.
It's all just sophistry, to advance his "Bright" agenda. Which I have
nothing against per se...a world full of Brights would be an
improvement over the current situation I think.
But his Bright propaganda isn't at all helpful in trying to understand
the underlying nature of reality.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Mon Aug 31 2009 - 15:51:04 PDT