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Looking for a word

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19 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
user_21
Newbie
United States
Joined 5366 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes

 
 Message 9 of 19
19 March 2010 at 8:04pm | IP Logged 
OlafP wrote:
it's often scientifically inclined people who insist on the reality of free will


You are right in that the term I am looking for is a term a scientist would use to describe the event. So words like fate, karma, and the like are excluded from my search.

However I don't support your claim that it is often scientists who believe in free will (maybe in the US it is so, even if that sounds like a stretch). You gonna have to back up your claim about that. Then again it depends very much on what you mean by free will. There are many definitions which are compatible with a deterministic world. Existentialist philosophers prefer to define it at the level of experience rather than metaphysics.

Edited by user_21 on 19 March 2010 at 8:24pm

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OlafP
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5437 days ago

261 posts - 667 votes 
Speaks: German*, French, English

 
 Message 10 of 19
19 March 2010 at 9:18pm | IP Logged 
user_21 wrote:
You gonna have to back up your claim about that.


I don't, even if the world is deterministic. ;-)

With "scientifically inclined" I didn't mean professional scientists, otherwise I would have written it. I studied physics myself and know that many of them are at least aware of the problem, even if they have no idea how to solve this riddle. Max Planck once wrote an essay (or maybe it was a transcribed speech) about it. His conclusion sounds a bit naive to anyone who has read Kant and Schopenhauer.

Einstein once was asked what his special theory of relativity means for time and space as concepts a priori, i.e. properties of the brain instead of physical reality, as it was claimed by Kant and used as a foundation by Schopenhauer for his whole idea of will and representation. If the records are correct then Schopenhauer was Einstein's favourite philosopher. So Einstein was probably aware of the problem that only Kant's distinction between empiric and intelligible character could solve the riddle of freedom and determinism, and this distinction would fall if time, space and causality were not a priori. Einstein plainly refused to answer the question without giving a reason.

Despite all of this I observed quite often that people who are interested in science as their hobby frown upon words like "fate" and "destiny". I don't like these words either, because they remind me of fortune-tellers and other charlatans.


BTW, I still don't know what that word is.
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user_21
Newbie
United States
Joined 5366 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes

 
 Message 11 of 19
19 March 2010 at 9:57pm | IP Logged 
Apart from all the different perspectives one can have about free will you still haven't backed up your claim that scientifically inclined (pardon me for the misunderstanding) people often are the ones that insist on the reality of free will. And I don't see why you shouldn't =). It seems more plausible to me that it is the ones that know a bit about science who have the tools for denying free will. And in my experience they prematurely do. On the other hand people who live on the surface of knowledge, so to speak, seem to be the ones to accept the notion of free will as a consequence of what I would call a historical residue. If anyone is to insist upon it it is the non educated or the very well educated. This just happens to be my experience on the matter. But I gladly welcome a different view.
This thread seems to have spun out completely too so no worries about the word. I'm losing hope anyways after having posted threads about it all over the place without result.
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dantalian
Diglot
Senior Member
Bouvet Island
Joined 5684 days ago

125 posts - 156 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, English
Studies: German

 
 Message 12 of 19
19 March 2010 at 10:12pm | IP Logged 
I really love aenigmas.

Could you be so kind to provide us with the movie name, please?
Given you knowing so many "accidentias" of the term (a term a scientist would use to describe the event, a descriptive term that has latin roots i wish to add) I hope you have not forgotten what movie you actually watched at the time.

This could defenitely narrow our search!

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user_21
Newbie
United States
Joined 5366 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes

 
 Message 13 of 19
19 March 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged 
dantalian wrote:
I really love aenigmas.

Could you be so kind to provide us with the movie name, please?
Given you knowing so many "accidentias" of the term (a term a scientist would use to describe the event, a descriptive term that has latin roots i wish to add) I hope you have not forgotten what movie you actually watched at the time.

This could defenitely narrow our search!


It torments me how I can't even remember the movie name. If I did though I would go through it again. First I thought it was "the answer man" aka "alan faber" so I zapped through it and couldn't find the scene. Maybe I went through it to fast though so your welcome to watch it.
Also I think that the word Im looking for ends on the letters "ty".

Edit: come to think of it, it could have been from Brooklyn's Finest.

Edited by user_21 on 19 March 2010 at 11:07pm

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OlafP
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5437 days ago

261 posts - 667 votes 
Speaks: German*, French, English

 
 Message 14 of 19
19 March 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged 
user_21 wrote:
you still haven't backed up your claim that scientifically inclined (pardon me for the misunderstanding) people often are the ones that insist on the reality of free will.


It's just the sum of experiences I had over the years. My perception may be skewed, but I think this is true for all perception anyway. And there is a funny aphorism by the German physicist and writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (18th century): "Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will."

How about these: http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=coincidence

Edited by OlafP on 19 March 2010 at 11:27pm

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user_21
Newbie
United States
Joined 5366 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes

 
 Message 15 of 19
19 March 2010 at 11:50pm | IP Logged 
OlafP wrote:
user_21 wrote:
you still haven't backed up your claim that scientifically inclined (pardon me for the misunderstanding) people often are the ones that insist on the reality of free will.


It's just the sum of experiences I had over the years. My perception may be skewed, but I think this is true for all perception anyway. And there is a funny aphorism by the German physicist and writer Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (18th century): "Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will."

How about these: http://freethesaurus.net/s.php?q=coincidence


The version of determinism I have in mind when talking about free will is the kind that presupposes a metaphysics derived from physics (which actually even rejects determinism on quantum mechanical grounds). Since I don't believe a philosophy can be based on physics I reject that notion thereby rendering free will immune to that kind of argument. The ontologies that scientific theories have proposed throughout the history of science have been incommensurable and are always subject to revision and change. So there seems to be no transcendental ontology on which to base a truth. So for me free will is better understood in phenomenological terms.

Btw, I think I found the word I was looking for in the link you posted: CONCURRENCY
Hurray and thanks for that! =)

Edited by user_21 on 19 March 2010 at 11:56pm

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user_21
Newbie
United States
Joined 5366 days ago

7 posts - 7 votes

 
 Message 16 of 19
21 March 2010 at 3:31am | IP Logged 
Concurrency describes the event when someone meets "their love" as the cause of them coinciding on the Y/Y/Z/time axis. There you have a dimensional analysis of the whole "meeting a soul-mate" business. Off course there are other factors that play a role, like how well equipped you are physically and psychologically but this should serve to illustrate the needlessness of notions such as karma, fate, and "meaning". Objections are welcome and encouraged! :)


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