Therion Ware #FBPPR #FBPE #HPLHS #smokefleet

Quite nice

That's nice

Well, that’s it, I’m off to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage for Samhain. Last year my preferred bar had a fairly good zombie floor show. I’m hoping they raise the bar this year, though in the circumstances raising the dead may be more appropriate. And, apparently and rather magnificently, the EES booths at the Channel Tunnel still aren’t actually in operation. Installed, ready, waiting for the French system to come alive. Perhaps they’re saving that particular resurrection for Halloween. #Samhain #LeTouquet #Halloween #EES

Channel tunnel not busy

Harsh but fair.

If you're going to do Biblical textual analysis and reconstruction, do it properly! youtube.com/watch?v=J1cAqUhV…

Gosh, who'd have thunk it?

the book that should not exist youtu.be/J1cAqUhV5E0?si=TUT6… via @YouTube

I was today/now years old when I discovered there's a Linux subsystem for windows! Oh what fun...

I was just listening to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, which amongst other things mentioned it used to be illegal to predict the monarch’s death, and I wondered whether this was one of those gloriously archaic laws that nobody had ever quite got round to repealing. Apparently not, at least not in the ordinary sense. The Treason Act 1351 is still in force and says it is treason to “compass or imagine” the death of the sovereign, but in medieval legal English that means intending, devising or plotting it, not looking at the actuarial tables and saying, “Well, statistically speaking, William probably ought to keep his diary fairly flexible after about 2040.” There really were later laws against attempting to discover the monarch’s lifespan through astrology, prophecy, witchcraft and similar means, which is presumably where the story acquires its wonderfully British kernel of truth. There is another amusing wrinkle. The Church of England still formally includes the King among those for whom its worshippers are instructed to pray. So quite a lot of Christians are, in effect, regularly asking God to improve the monarch’s prospects beyond what the actuarial tables predict. Unfortunately, when intercessory prayer has actually been subjected to controlled testing, things have been less impressive. The large STEP trial of 1,802 cardiac bypass patients found no improvement in recovery among patients unknowingly prayed for. Rather awkwardly, patients who knew they were being prayed for actually had significantly more complications. So predicting the King’s death from actuarial evidence is legal. Trying to bring it about is treason. And attempting to postpone it by supernatural intervention remains constitutionally respectable, if experimentally somewhat underwhelming. Britain is a marvellous country. #Radio4 #WomansHour #BritishHistory #Monarchy #Law #Prayer

If my choices are deterministic but impossible to predict in detail, what difference does libertarian free will actually make? By libertarian free will, I mean the stronger incompatibilist claim that, at the moment of choice, with the entire prior physical and mental state of the world held fixed, more than one action is genuinely possible, and that which action occurs is not fully determined by prior causes. That is stronger than merely saying I act voluntarily, deliberate, respond to reasons, or am free from coercion. A compatibilist can affirm all of those things. Suppose my decisions are determined by prior states, but the system is chaotic, computationally irreducible, exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions, and impossible to predict without effectively letting it run. From the inside, I still deliberate, weigh evidence, imagine alternatives, change my mind and act for reasons. So what exactly is missing? The crucial distinction is causal. Under determinism, my reasons, beliefs, memories, desires and deliberations are among the causes of what I do. The fact that those mental states themselves have prior causes does not make them causally irrelevant. That is very different from fatalism, where the same outcome occurs regardless of what I think or decide. If I encounter different evidence, form different beliefs and therefore act differently, then my reasoning is doing causal work even if the entire process is deterministic. The important philosophical distinction is then between metaphysical openness and epistemic openness. Libertarian free will says that, with the same complete prior state, A and B are both genuinely possible. Determinism says only one is. But if no observer can predict which outcome will occur, and if the agent still responds to reasons, learns and modifies behaviour, what practical difference follows? And before someone says, “That is just randomness” - no. A deterministic system is not random merely because it is unpredictable. Chaotic systems can be fully deterministic while remaining practically unpredictable because tiny differences in initial conditions produce radically different outcomes. Nor am I claiming unpredictability itself amounts to freedom. Roulette wheels are unpredictable too. What matters is reason-responsive causation. My action is caused by my deliberation. My deliberation is caused by my beliefs, evidence, memories and dispositions. Those in turn have causes. Nothing about that causal chain implies that reasons are absent from it. And this is where I think libertarian free will owes us an explanation. If a deterministic agent can deliberate, learn, respond to evidence, surprise us and behave in ways that are practically unpredictable, what additional causal power does libertarian free will provide? Worse, if the final choice is not sufficiently caused by my reasons, character and evidence, what does cause it? If the answer is irreducible indeterminacy, that is where randomness becomes the problem. So for me the interesting question is: What observable or explanatory difference would libertarian free will make over a sufficiently complex, reason-responsive deterministic agent? If the answer is “none”, I’m not sure what work the extra metaphysics is doing. #FreeWill #Determinism #Compatibilism #Philosophy #Metaphysics

the cartography of hell youtu.be/QKn8mAaz2Wc?si=Xf0v… via @YouTube