(July 27, 2016 at 11:10 pm)Cato Wrote: Free will debates are so frustrating. The fucking philosophers rarely degree on definition and the boundaries of application. My opinion is that if determinists are correct, something I doubt can ever be proven or definitively disproved, our species is still reconciled to navigating our existence as if we had free will. So in the end it really doesn't make a fuck.
The problem is that philosophical arguments never really get resolved, but we move on to the next level of argument anyway. As far as I'm concerned, I don't yet have a definitive answer as to whether there's actually an objective world. I don't know that other minds exist. I don't know for sure if the things I remember ever really happened.
But what we do is say things like, "Man. . . I touch stuff, and it feels real, so I'm fine just saying it's real. If other minds didn't exist, then why am I surprised at what a bitch my nextdoor neighbor can be? Hey. . . if the past doesn't exist, at least my memories, as stored in my brain, are useful for me. . . that's probably good enough."
The problem comes later, when nobody can see that almost every "new" argument begs the questions about those old and discarded arguments.
People "know" and consider it "proven," that there's nothing but the physical universe as viewed by science, for example. And here I am, poor me, still trying to figure out if there's a universe at all.