Before I started this reply, I checked the definition of "paradox". It describes a seeming contradiction. I had misunderstood it to mean that the contradictions are real and actual. It just shows what little confusions I still carry around, even at my age. So a paradox is a situation that seems to contain contradictions. OK.Marvin_Edwards wrote: ↑April 26th, 2020, 1:09 pmAll the false implications of deterministic causal necessity. The notion that causation can cause events or that determinism can determine events (reification fallacy). The notion that the laws of nature have causal agency (metaphorical thinking). The notion that inevitability excludes possibilities and choices (figurative thinking).Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 26th, 2020, 12:16 pm
Can you think of an example of a paradox that we are (or could be) sucked into? I can't think of any. Perhaps my imagination is lacking?
The impossible "philosophical" definition of free will (freedom from causal necessity is an oxymoron).
And doesn't the phrase "scientific antirealism" strike you as at least a bit paradoxical?
Causation gives rise to "false implications"? I'd be interested to know what they are? In a recent discussion of causation, and whether it always applies, I noted absurdly strong support for the way we've been raised to understand things. And maybe that support is justified. But counter-information would be interesting to see.
That "the laws of nature have causal agency" is a fun one. It's the word "laws", and the way we understand it, that leads to problems, I think. For our human legal system proffers laws that we consider binding, although they are binding only because we enforce (i.e. reify) those bindings on ourselves. And so we can sometimes mistake nature's 'laws' to be binding. We fail to apprehend that it's nature (not its 'laws') that is the master, the reference, and that our formulations of natural laws are descriptive, not proscriptive. That, surely, is a simple misunderstanding, not a paradox?
I think inevitability does exclude possibilities. It's inevitability itself that is the chimera here, no?
Our definition of free will is fine, I think. But the thing it describes, the very concept of free will, may have problems. I think it's these that give rise to the paradox?
As for "scientific antirealism", wouldn't it be more intuitive if we called it "anti-(scientific realism)", for that is what it is? Scientific realism is (or contains) a significant and unjustified (unjustifiable) assumption: that the 'reality' our perception shows to us is a more or less accurate rendition of Objective Reality. This has nothing to do with science; science cannot deal with such a thing. There is no evidence - pro or con - to work with, so there is no analysis, and no conclusions may be drawn. Metaphysics can deal with such things, but science cannot. As regards this assumption, scientific realism is a faith position. And its opposite is another perspective, not a paradox.