link to determinism article
Here is a link to determinism article I mentioned in class determinism
posted by louis @ 1:24 PM
Monday, September 08, 2008
About Me
- Name: louis
- Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Eager to start writing again , I hit upon tne idea of starting A blog and calling it cogito ergo sum. For years I have been fascinated by a famous episode in Descartes Life. He decided to take R and R from military service for a few days to sit in front of a fire place,review everything he thought he knew,subject himself to a bath(closer to a tsunami) of scepticism, to see what he came up with that was immune to doubt. Finally it was "I think therefore I am". I have always found this result a bit lame but I have been fascinated by the process. I am also fascinated by the procedure attributed to the British historian, Keith Thomas whereby he took notes at random, put them in appropriate envelopes and when one became thick enough, he reviewed it more systematically. I will do the same on a variety of subjects, religion, politics, film etc until I reach summary statements. This will be useful to me even if no one reads anything I write here.
Previous Posts
- Conservatism
- Religion
- Kant and Machiavelli
- Passages
- Protestantism and opera
- Individualism
- J,S Mill
- Cities
- Definitions
- West Thought: Reprise
1 Comments:
Interesting article. While I agree that the thinking process itself is a determined (or caused, if you will) process, I wonder whether the initial moment of initiating that thought process is. What I mean is, when one starts to think about something, neutrotransmitters in the frontal lobe go crazy, and in turn "causes" one to keep thinking about that thought. But at the very moment of the instigation of that thought, there could be the possibility of no cause or nothing to determine it. Obviously if it was a thought like "hmm I should cook", it has a cause, primarily of one being hungry. But if one were to suddenly ponder about the existence of the universe while gardening one day, the causal relationship is not so obvious. Furthermore, there does exist the will power (whether free or not) in that individual to switch to thinking about nano-bots whilst thinking about the aforementioned metaphysics.
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