[MD] Checking out

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
I can see how you would think you need to do that [give up on Steve] given the embarrassing position you find yourself in. You've berated me for "improper use of terms" while you've been found to have been defending compatiblism as the exact opposite of what your beloved SEP defines it to be. You berated me for months for asserting two mutually exclusive fundamentally conflicting ideas...


dmb says:
Thanks. That's a really great example. As usual, you're pressing a point that has already been answered. Like I said, all you have to do is find the answer and add the phrase "like I said" to front of it. 

Like I said (at least twice):
...For anyone to maintain a compatibilist position, one has to use a softer definition of "determinism", a version soft enough to allow for the freedom it is supposedly compatible with. And, obviously, one has to use a softer version precisely because it's logically impossible to say that freedom is compatible with a total lack of freedom. That's the kind of nonsense I've been complaining about throughout this debate. 

What's worse is that Steve is willing to make this charge even though I made this point already. Just yesterday, in fact, I said to Steve, "You're describing compatibilism as a position that maintains two mutually exclusive ideas at the same time. That is nonsense. By analogy, a thing can be warm but it cannot be rightly described as hot and cold at the same time because one rules out the other. It [compatibilism] says there are determining factors but not to the exclusion of all freedom. It simply doesn't make any sense to say we are 100% determined and also say that we are free. To be a compatibilist, you cannot embrace determinism too. To be a compatibilist, you cannot deny freedom but that's exactly what the determinist does."


Steve also said to dmb: 
I'd hate to see you bail out now that we are making so much progress.


dmb says:
I would describe the amount of progress gained over the last six months as exactly "zero". And you have just proven once again that you're just not capable of listening. How many times have I repeated the point above, which you're asking about as if it I haven't already said several times. Each time you do that, it's just further proof that you are oblivious and delusional. And you do that every single time. 

Yawn!