This is a fallacy I just learned about. Or rather, I just learned the name for a fallacy I was already more-or-less aware of. One commits this fallacy by trying to describe something that is inanimate as if it had feelings: i.e., fire "tries" to rise, etc. I guess those who reject teleology see Aristotelians as committing this fallacy, but I think Aristotelians themselves would insist that they don't literally mean "tries to" when describing the behavior of inanimate things. Something analogous, but what is it?
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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