Three things bother me here, and they’re all about which questions are being asked.
The “tree falling in a forest” questions isn’t, as far as I’ve encountered it outside of this blog, about the definition of sound. Rather, it’s about whether or not reality behaves the same when you do not observe it, an issue that you casually dismissed, without any proof, evidence, or even argument. There are ways to settle this dispute partially, though they are not entirely empirical due to the nature of the conundrum.
Ignoring the question of free will, ill defined as it may be, is merely -pretending to be wise-. You’re basically saying you now know not to ask these questions, without explaining why (at least here). If there are any convincing arguments that settle a well-defined notion of free will, I welcome them.
Last but not least, I’m bothered by the choice of a question to settle all arguments—just write the mental processes that lead to the argument? Why stop there? Why not map the specific clusters of neurons and synapses activating the argument and reinforced by it? Having written down this stack of processes, can you perform neurosurgery that will stop this pattern of thinking (but not unrelated ones)? In Science, there may be such a thing as “being done”, but this isn’t it. Not by a longshot.
Three things bother me here, and they’re all about which questions are being asked.
The “tree falling in a forest” questions isn’t, as far as I’ve encountered it outside of this blog, about the definition of sound. Rather, it’s about whether or not reality behaves the same when you do not observe it, an issue that you casually dismissed, without any proof, evidence, or even argument. There are ways to settle this dispute partially, though they are not entirely empirical due to the nature of the conundrum.
Ignoring the question of free will, ill defined as it may be, is merely -pretending to be wise-. You’re basically saying you now know not to ask these questions, without explaining why (at least here). If there are any convincing arguments that settle a well-defined notion of free will, I welcome them.
Last but not least, I’m bothered by the choice of a question to settle all arguments—just write the mental processes that lead to the argument? Why stop there? Why not map the specific clusters of neurons and synapses activating the argument and reinforced by it? Having written down this stack of processes, can you perform neurosurgery that will stop this pattern of thinking (but not unrelated ones)? In Science, there may be such a thing as “being done”, but this isn’t it. Not by a longshot.