Folks like RD like to invoke "Copernican revolution" in support of materialistic notions of human nature. But they use this term uncritically. Even the Copernican revolution's overturning of one feature of our common sense (the notion that the sun goes around the earth) relied upon other common sense notions. The same is true for any scientific revolution: to appreciate its continuity with the past one must.... (to be continued: going to ice cream with daughter)
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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