Yin & Yang

February 14, 2013

Human Studies Are Not Science

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By Don Kirk in Freedomist, Philosophy of Mind, Yin & Yang

Over at the ‘Flickers of Freedom’ philosophers’ blog, an intense and sincere dialogue about free will and the is/ought distinction. (sigh). My short comment:

“Determinism is a fact of science and free will is a fact of human nature, which is a study, not a science. They are a complement like the yin and yang, not the clash of opposites of a Greek agon or the compatabilist’s messy swirl of oil and water.

We try much too hard to make understanding free will difficult.”

[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]

April 22, 2012

Dennett’s incompatability

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By Don Kirk in Prudent, Pragmatic Pluralism, Yin & Yang

Andrew Sullivan, in his ‘Daily Dish’ blog, today quotes philosopher Daniel Dennett on clergy who have lost faith but continue to be priests. Professor Dennett is famed for being a compatabilist–someone who believes that free will and determinism are compatable–and for being one of the Four Horsemen, a group of prominent, intellectual, activist atheists.

Dennett’s compatability on free will and determinism fails him on religion and atheism. For Dennett, religious belief is irrational and self-limiting. To be a believer is to be in the clutches of superstition and subject to wild flights of emotional insensibility. Lapsed priests are rarely able to break free from the “tragic trap” of their religious career path.

Religiosity is not “tragic,” and it is not a “trap.” Religion will always be a normal, integral part of human socialization, just as atheism will always be a normal skeptical response to metaphysical claims. Neither is ever going to conquer the other; they both will endure forever as part of being a normal human.

That’s what compatability is: the eternal binding of complete opposites, like the pluralism of the Yin and Yang, where one cannot even exist without the presence of the other. Dennett’s religious/atheist incompatabilism is what is truly ‘self-limiting.’