The horror! The horror!

morality is nothing more than behavior perceived by each individual to be mutually beneficial to the individual and the people near to the individual. sociopaths are unable to perceive the mutual benefit (or to consider it, so it comes to the same result) and thus behave in 'immoral' ways.it is the basic behavior pattern of anarchy at it's most rawest most honest form. every person decides whether to comply with their perceived code of morality or not.in it's most covert form it is covered over by layers of convention of thought and imbued with supposed extra meaning from some supernatural source or other. this can help some people to behave in more consistent patterns, but it is unable to adjust to changing social situations and ultimately fails in the long run.and where does "no free will" come from? not in a world with chaos prevalent from little things like bird do on the car window to big things like earthquakes at the bottom of the ocean. and anarchy is nothing but the full implementation of free will ...heh.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

heh. exactly the sort of closed minded approach that is not able to change according to need as I noted.tell me again how the ten commandments say it is immoral to abuse children? history has shown? sorry, history has refuted. the "history" of religious imposed morality has been one of repression.history has shown that morallity is rationally derived from first principals and must be universal and not subject to bias or personal beliefs to be valid.It is subjective in the sense that each person derives their own version, whether they base it on real principles or borrow it from some other source: they decide what they are going to live by.It is not subjective in the sense that there are fundamental principles that apply and that can be logically derived.I'll take anarchy over theocracy any day of the week and twice on sunday.thanks.This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-15-2005 18:31 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Personally, I think free will is a non-issue.Usually it is given as a strict alternative to determinism (as you seem to suggest), however when you include chaos in the mix then there is no {{one or the other}} (false) dichotomy.Usually it is only applied to humans as well, but all creatures, big and small, make decisions in their lives, that are based on their personal best {view\interest} even if that decision is {hungry, must eat}.The only fetters on will are the self imposed ones based on ones beliefs and rational thinking.

I looked at that and felt that it wasn't quite enough for me.There are elements that are determinisitic in the universe, and there are elements that are chaotic, where the result is unknowable until it happens. I also feel that one of those chaotic elements is the ability of life to decide certain behavior modes, not just free will for humans, but unfettered will for all life.the fact that person A decides to blow himself up at the bus station is deterministic from his freely made decision. the fact that person B happens to be in the bus station at the time is chaotic, even though dependent on his freely made decision. the fact that person B is blown up is neither due to his free will nor to determinism.but we could be arguing different sides of the same coin.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

That pretty much says a relationship between free-will and determinism exclusive of other factors.I feel there is a third axis (or more) for randomness beyond the scope of either free-will or determinism to answer for all possibilities.

perhaps we are arguing the same point, but not understanding the terms.to me orthogonal is perpendicular and when you arrange one to be orthogonal to the other you are creating a grid system to map all the relationships while only considering their "free-will-ness" and their "deterministic-ness" and no other factors.now a null-correlation position to me would mean a scattering of points with no discernable correlation, and I would agree with that.but you also seem to indicate that a high "free-will-ness" will correlate with a high "deterministic-ness" ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

That makes them de facto inapplicable to any who do not believe it that system. You are already at 40% irrelevant to the needs of those people. Sorry that is pure shinola and personal interpretation: I asked for chapter and verse from the 10 commandments. You claimed they were adequate to the task, and I have asked how they apply to one certain situation. If you need to dance around that one issue then I would say that my point is made: they don't apply to that situation, and thus are inadequate for modern needs. They are not adaptable to modern needs. What part of the bible talks about elections? What part talks about justice decided by a jury of your peers? What part talks about all people having the right to be free from slavery? Sorry the history of known christian\religious regimes was one of repression and one of the causes of people coming to the US to evade. And we aren't even talking about abuses of power here. You also forget Mahatma Ghandi's version, Gautama Buddha's version, etcetera. The point is that individuals make individual decisions on the morals they live by -- and your examples are cases in point: their version of morality is subjective and based on their view. This is not saying it is correct or valid, it is saying that is the way it is.Now if I was going to pick a religious model to use it would be the Buddhist Noble Eight-Fold Path (click for full article)
Note that not one of those says you have to be a buddist or believe in buddhism. Nor do they say they are absolute edicts, rather they are a path that leads to the right behavior through individual subjective evaluation and knowledge.Note that "Right Action deals with refraining from killing, stealing and unchastity. It helps one to develop a character that is self-controlled and mindful of right of others." IS directly applicable to not engaging in child abuse ... "mindful of the rights of others" ... what a wonderful concept eh?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Really? Thanks for the compliment. Are we talking about the same definitions? are we talking the same discussion?as far as meaning of the terminology I get the point being that there are several definitions in and out of math for the term ... there are also orthogonal views where things are looked at from different perpendicular lines of vision to correlate the description of objects involved.I am using orthogonal not as correlation but as a frame, axis at right angles on a grid, a map, to observe if correlation occurs, and saying that I not only don't see any correlation, I don't see any relationship to base a correlation on.my point is more that there is more than just free-will and determinism, that there exist random factors that cannot relate to either and yet affect the results just as readilyinsisting on clarity of vision is good. insisting on only one version of it is bad.

fine.

my point on this issue is that free will is always compared to determinism, including is this whole discussion about how they are not related, but cannot be kept out of the argument? and to me it is a non-issue, almost an oxymoron term.you have will.then there is the rest of the universe, with {unknown\chaos\random} factors that rule out determinism and free will being mutually exclusive or even significant portions of the whole picture, especially when you include {everything we don't know}this whole bit about orthogonal vs perpendicular vs whatever nit-picking little definition each and every person wants to use is a mountain out of a molehill irrelevant to the issue of free will being a non-starter.I was unaware of the use of orthogonal in statistics. My bad. In my opinion free will isn't even an {axis\line\issue} to be orthogonal to.personally I chuckle whenever someone mentions free will. especially as they cannot do it without lifting the other foot and putting it down on determinism.Now, shall we talk about the issue? sheesh.

To me this usage is more like skewed -- two lines that do not intersect and are neither parallel nor perpendicular, they are not related and are not even oriented in the same frame of reference. I don't think "orthogonal" has the desired connotations here, regardless of my initial miss-interpreation. I wonder what J.Leno's "man on the street" would say the term means?Now let's discuss whether "will" needs to have a qualifier or not ...