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I feel like I am in a debate with a bot caught in an endless loop. You just keep repeating the same misunderstandings of my position on free will without really directly addressing anything I say in response to those misunderstandings. It is not just about optional volitional actions that an...

Jarhyn, there was nothing in that long post that really made me think we could have a profitable discussion on this subject. We seem to be operating on totally different wavelengths, and I simply do not agree to abandon the conventional usage of the term "natural language". You have obviously...

Israel's proposal up to this point has been: Surrender, and we'll stop shooting. The first step in mediating a violent conflict is to stop the shooting. Netanyahu has other reasons to keep the shooting going. He has just announced that Hamas has to be destroyed before the shooting stops...

Republicans are extremely worried about weaponization of the government, particularly the courts, by radical Democrats. They even have a Congressional committee devoted to investigating the issue. It seems that there may be evidence that the Democrats have been using the courts for their own...

OK, I'm not going to argue with you over what "natural language" means. I'm a linguist with over half a century of professional experience, but what would I know? :shrug:

Actually, I think that he will be able to vote if he isn't sentenced to prison. Florida doesn't allow felons in prison to vote, but those convicted of felony may be able to vote while appeals are pending or if they don't get actual prison time. I don't know if that is actually true about...

That's the nightmare scenario. A pleasant dream would be that a lot of voters who might otherwise have voted to reelect him will either abstain or vote against the convicted felon. MAGA media is spinning this for all they are worth, but this is going to be a serious drag on Trump's campaign...

Jarhyn, the term "natural language" is well-understood even in your own field of expertise--e.g. you have the subfield of AI called "Natural Language Processing". So it doesn't matter how you would like to use the term. If you don't want to use the term the way everyone else uses it, that is...

Noam Chomsky's theory of generative linguistics probably comes closest to attempting a marriage between the two, although I think that they are fundamentally different approaches to the nature of language. Natural languages are symbolic signal systems that are formally incomplete with respect...

Look, the expression "could have acted otherwise" is literally in the past tense. Could is the past tense of the modal auxiliary verb can in its epistemic (not deontic or dynamic) sense. That is, could refers to speculation about the future at a time in the past. Let's just get the semantics...

As someone who has done a lot of research in lexical semantics, I would argue that questions of meaning are subject to objective empirical investigation. The meanings of words and expressions are social conventions, and that means that normative usage within a community of speakers has to be...

I don't know, but that is the question that they need to answer. Should people be held responsible for their actions or not? I could not tell you at this point how DBT would answer that yes/no question. I suspect that he would not answer it with a simple yes or no. OTOH, he doesn't seem to...

Depressing and frustrating. Biden is trying to please both sides and failing to please either.

Same problem, but people can Google superdeterminism to figure out what it is about, but not how it relates to free will. As usual, scientists tend to toss around the term as if everyone agreed that it was about freedom from causality rather than freedom from forced choices. Note that the verb...

Jamie Raskin proposes a unique solution to the problem of arrogant above-the-law Supreme Court justices that refuse to recuse themselves: Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases** Unfortunately, it would require Secretary Merrick Garland...

If you are quoting someone as an authority on free will and compatibilism, then their qualifications do matter. Nevertheless, I also focused on what he said, contrary to what you claim here. Nothing he wrote changed or helped to explain anything you've already said over and over, but it would...

Trump has made very bad judgments in the past, and I do think that he is terrified of a conviction, regardless of his bravado and the front that he puts up. His supporters have always bought into his martyrdom narrative, and a conviction will only confirm their delusion. But a felony...

The need for a link wasn't to learn who the author was. I managed to Google that much. It was to check your source for accuracy and context. In any case, I made my point based on what you quoted. I still find it hard to believe that you scrounged up a poorly written essay by someone with...

Huh? No link, but a reference to some guy with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Google suggests he is the one who got his degree from Beaver college in 1983 and has done some posting in Quora. This is the expert you scrounged up to defend your take on the free will debate? I really don't...

First of all, it was 7th, not 27th, of October, but that was just a typo. Your implication that the cycle started on that date is utter nonsense. Mossad had seen the Hamas forces training for the invasion and just dismissed it, thinking that it was all for show. This cycle of violence has...