While listening to what Wittgenstein has to say about necessity as it pertains to mathematics, I noted that he is not denying that we encounter constraint or necessity when doing mathematics: he is denying that this constraint comes from something outside the game. Rather, it is from the game itself. But what if mathematics is a game we can play with rational beings very different from ourselves? Can we intuit that all would be constrained as we are? Even if they are incredibly smarter? And what about God? Is math a game we play with God rather than being a kind of activity the we aim at God (or at God's Mind) as a kind of ideal object?
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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