What is philosophy?
The Greek philosophia means “love of wisdom.” I think philosophy is about the love of and pursuit of wisdom and truth.
Can philosophy make progress?
We can get closer to the truth and inspire more love for the search for it, so yes. It might be hard to know when we’re closer to truth, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t closer. Whether or not philosophy can make progress depends on your answer to the question of “What is philosophy?” With my definition, it can. With others, maybe not.
Is there a god?
No; I would argue the concept is unintelligible. If we bracket our concerns about the intelligibility of god due to the limitations of our minds, and weigh the evidence in a Bayesian way, I would argue there almost certainly is no god.
Would you get into the Star Trek transporter?
Absolutely not; it’s a murder machine. Your point of view ceases to exist and another person’s begins. In every single way (except for one), that new person is you. But that one difference is why I would never get in it.
Do you have free will?
Not in the sense that our thoughts, desires, personality, and actions are uncaused, rather than a product of our genes and environment. Thoughts simply arise, and we would have to self-cause our own thoughts in a logically impossible way to claim to have a free will, uncaused by prior events. Volitional action can be meaningfully distinguished from involuntary action; coercion is different from uncoerced action; but I hesitate to call voluntary action the product of free will. We certainly have a will, it just isn’t free. Your will is not free from the influence of prior causes. Despite this, I still use free will language, since it’s the simplest shorthand to describe the difference between voluntary and involuntary action. This is no more of a concession than “sunrise” and “sunset” is a concession to geocentrism. In other cases, our lack of information drives the use of free will language. I believe that Laplace’s demon, correcting for the true randomness that may exist at the bottom of our universe, would be able to predict our actions and thoughts without error. Since we are not Laplacean demons, however, it’s easier to simply say that we “chose” to do this or that, since we can’t see our puppet strings, even though they are there. To tie up the loose end on the “true randomness” that may exist: Randomness does not equal freedom.
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You can learn a lot about someone based on their answers to the five questions. These questions are intended to be conversation starters, and they begin to get at your views on naturalism, religion, the self, knowledge, and freedom. What are your answers? Comment below 🙂