Because that is what “answerable” means to a scientist?
I guess I could just rephrase the question this way: why should Aaronson get to assume he should be able to understand the skeptic’s objection in terms of, say, physics or biology? We have very good reasons to think we should answer things with physics or biology where we can, but we can’t let methodology screen off a question entirely.
Must be the inference gap between a philosopher and a scientist.
I don’t think so, I think I was just unclear. It’s perfectly fine of course for Aaronson to say ‘if I can’t understand part of the problem of free will within a scientific methodology, I’m going to set it aside.’ But it’s not okay for him to say ‘if I can’t understand part of the problem of free will within a scientific methodology, we should all just set it aside as unanswerable’ unless he has some argument to that effect. Hardcore naturalism is awesome, but we don’t get it by assumption.
I guess I could just rephrase the question this way: why should Aaronson get to assume he should be able to understand the skeptic’s objection in terms of, say, physics or biology? We have very good reasons to think we should answer things with physics or biology where we can, but we can’t let methodology screen off a question entirely.
Sorry, I don’t understand your rephrasing. Must be the inference gap between a philosopher and a scientist.
I don’t think so, I think I was just unclear. It’s perfectly fine of course for Aaronson to say ‘if I can’t understand part of the problem of free will within a scientific methodology, I’m going to set it aside.’ But it’s not okay for him to say ‘if I can’t understand part of the problem of free will within a scientific methodology, we should all just set it aside as unanswerable’ unless he has some argument to that effect. Hardcore naturalism is awesome, but we don’t get it by assumption.
Hmm, I don’t believe that he is saying anything like that.