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ORIGINAL: philosophy

i am curious however as to how it can be an intellectual surrender to believe that free will is part of our psycho-ethical decision making process, just as empathy is. Surely both are valid elements, but in the meta-social sense the balance between the two is up for discussion........

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ORIGINAL: CuriousLord

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

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Like most, it can make things easier to understand, but it is still formed to flaw outside of the appropriate range of approximation.

Ummm... What?

We make generalizations to serve as simplifactions. They make life easier- and they can be, if they're a good generalization, pretty much accurate, for a certain range.

Tons of examples. Since I love Physics, Netwon's' first. Netwon's Laws are still taught to kids today. Stuff like, conservation of momentum. Works great, too!, while you work at more human scales. Of course, it's, even then, slightly off, but not so much to really matter. At very small levels, though, quantum effects damn its results. Relativity does somethign similar, with regards to higher speeds.

Another model is, "You can speak to anyone in English". Where I live, that's a pretty good assumption- in all my life, I've never met anyone here who couldn't speak English. Then again, that's this little corner of the world. It's pretty much accurate, here, though it's only pretty much accurate so long as it's applied here, or somewhere else where it happens to work.

Anyhow, as to not make a short explanation encumbered by examples, I hope this works.

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As for the ubiquity of Timmy's......well, this year Canada, next year...THE WORLD

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ORIGINAL: Marc2b

It basically boils down to this: no one theory can explain everything. If that’s your contention, you won’t get any argument from me. The notion that there is some theoretical model that would solve (or even just explain) all our problems is the starting point of the ideology. I hate ideologies. There are always exceptions to generalities but I do believe that – as a generality – we as humans are born with a pre-programed set of instincts and behaviors, a result of our evolution and our animal heritage. That these instincts served us well (i.e. aided our survival) throughout most of our evolution but that we have become victims of our success. We now live in a world where our instincts can get us (both individually and as a whole) into serious trouble. I believe that the key to this problem is to channel these instincts into productive, or at least benign – activities. For example (I’m having de-ja-vu here, I’m pretty sure I put this down in another thread, oh well), using sports to channel aggression. I make no pretensions to having all the answers on how to accomplish this (and God strike me down if I ever do think I have all the answers), but I do believe this is the area we should be looking in.