You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Desrtopa comments on Exclude the supernatural? My worldview is up for grabs. - Less Wrong Discussion

24 Post author: r_claypool 25 June 2011 03:46AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (92)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Desrtopa 25 June 2011 02:43:20PM 5 points [-]

Free will is covered pretty extensively on this site, although as the wiki page suggests, it can be a useful experience to work out for yourself.

Moral absolutes are also addressed, but since I'm having trouble remembering the names of the articles, it's easier to simply ask; can you explain how we would observe the universe to be different if there were definitively no moral absolutes?

Consciousness is probably the least open-and-shut case of the three. Some reading is available here, but it might be quicker to deal with the question by asking this. Is the entirety of the consciousness contained in a supernatural entity? That is, is it an irreducible mental thing? If so, why does a person's mental state correspond so consistently to the physical state of their brain? If not, and the supernatural phenomenon merely translates the physical states into subjective experience, why suppose that something that doesn't follow the rules that every other known thing in existence does is the best explanation for this one thing, given that we've never found evidence of anything like that anywhere else?

Comment author: Peterdjones 25 June 2011 07:00:23PM *  0 points [-]

Free will is covered pretty extensively on this site, although as the wiki page suggests, it can be a useful experience to work out for yourself.

However, note that a necessary instruction is missing. You have to disregard the possibility of a theory of non-deflationary naturalistic libertarianism