Gregg R Thomas

_Robert_ wrote:
Oh, damn, too late

JP has become a parody of himself.

I’m reminded of a quote Google can’t find so I’ll have to paraphrase it, but JP reminds me of it:

“There’s no difference between the avant-garde and a parody of the avant-garde.”

A parody of Jordan Peterson is indistinguishable from Jordan Peterson.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior post.

Maybe, but my point is, that there’s evidence for its existence. If I had no free will, I could not respond to contingent, random circumstances by deliberating and picking and choosing.

Is this “ev…[Read more]

Yes, but he deals in stories, human psychology and human nature.  It doesn’t have to make perfect logical sense.  It can have a psychological logic – a human logic rather than a mathematical or physical logic.

If you’re expecting a meticulously logical philosophical treatise, you won’t get one out of him.  But his stories make sense in a human setting.

Unseen wrote:
You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior post.

Maybe, but my point is, that there’s evidence for its existence.  If I had no free will, I could not respond to contingent, random circumstances by deliberating and picking and choosing.

Just because I can’t directly fi…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
JP strikes me mostly as someone mostly trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame. To me he’s the “Hawk-Tua girl” of the identity wars.

I don’t think he’s a fame-whore at all.  Being a little bit up close to him, I was impressed with his integrity and responsibility.  He was quite happy to apologise and say he was wrong about somethi…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
Everything obeys rules, but that doesn’t in itself imply complete determinism.  My free will is constrained by rules: I will never be able to do exactly what I like.  As for the rest, I can employ free choice.

You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior pos…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
So, is he against egalitarianism, or just the overshoot?

He’s definitely against the overshoot.  I don’t pin him as anti-egalitarian.  I was following him from the early days of the trans-pronoun crisis in Canada, when I was in the middle of a breakdown.  Those opponents being “pummeled”?  That was mainly me.  I thought they were…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
By contrast, free will exists as a feeling we seem to have, like deja vu, which we all recognize is an illusion. If it exists and if emergence explains it, then it obeys rules like the rules birds and fish follow in flocking and schooling.

Everything obeys rules, but that doesn’t in itself imply complete determinism.  My free will…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The squirrel does not respond as if it were giving careful consideration to its next move. It reacts to real events in real time. That reaction is entirely instinctive. That instinct is highly tuned and the reaction is faster than any considered choice could ever be. That instinct is the result of Evolution only and…

[Read more]

I agree that people are biased against him, because he’s not straight-ahead woke, and people just hate that.  But what kind of wisdom or knowledge have you gained from his lectures and books?  To me, he says a lot of stuff without ever actually saying anything.  I recognise that this could be because his belief system is new to me, therefore it go…[Read more]

@Belle Rose, what is it you get from Jordan Peterson?  I have sympathy with him and I don’t think he’s a right wing nutcase.  But I can never understand what he’s talking about, beyond his 10 rules for young men, which I think are a good idea.

Here’s why emergence is bogus when used to defend free will.

In legitimate examples of emergence, the phenomenon preexists the explanation. The flocking of birds or schooling of fish are an emergent phenomenon. Emergence, based on a set of rules so simple even fish and small birds can obey them*, explains the behavior. Flocking and schooling was…[Read more]

Well, it (the squirrel) has to respond to real events in real time, so I’m guessing it has free will.

The squirrel does not respond as if it were giving careful consideration to its next move. It reacts to real events in real time. That reaction is entirely instinctive. That instinct is highly tuned and the reaction is faster than any c…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
Ever stick your hand on a hot burner?

I could choose to leave my hand on the burner.  I’d be an idiot, but I could do it.

_Robert_ wrote:
That decision may have been made before the critter knew it would jump. The squirrel’s conscience was informed at some point. Yeah, I’d say a squirrel has some level of self-awareness.

Well, it has to respond to real events in real time, so I’m guessing it has free will.

PopeBeanie wrote:
Must not the feeling of free will at least be a product of determinism? A legitimate product of evolution? And very useful, fortunately, if not more pleasurable than the feeling of having no control at all.

That’s the way I see it.  Nature has endowed us with free will that we can use to navigate contingent circumstances as…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Your arguing in favor of free will is based on a belief you want to defend to the death, not on a fact or set of facts that can’t be denied or disproven.

Maybe, maybe not.  That’s irrelevant to the truth of any argument.  I see yours as the “argument from ignorance” or “argument from dumbfounding”.  In other words, “we can’t work…[Read more]

I’m starting to see “emergence” as a kind of “God of the gaps” type of argument. When all else fails in many disputes, they trot out “It’s an emergent property.”

In other words, as in the religious person who presupposes that God exists, and whose incredible shrinking proposition is running out of supportive arguments, who then resorts to “If I…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:

Unseen wrote:
How do you account for free will in a way that rescues the “free” part of free will and attaches it to the “will” part of free will without violating the scientific laws of the universe?

Absolutely. Nothing new here, not sure, did I misuse the word emergence? Free will couldn’t emerge, except as a theoretic…

[Read more]

I see free will as a faculty, or cluster of related faculties, that emerges from the biological substrate of the living brain, in the same way that morality emerges as a number of related faculties from the physical reality of obligate collaboration driven by the biological pressure to reproduce and survive and thrive within a risky ecological niche.