rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (10/10/85)
> I think that it is important for people to continue to remind Rich Rosen > how wrong he is about this. This analysis represents ONLY ONE of the > historically conspicuous attempts to define "free will." Even as such, it > is a distortion. Descartes was perhaps as far in this direction as anybody, > but I don't think that even he would have claimed that free action takes > place "regardless of one's physical make-up." Still, I will grant that > Rich Rosen's roughly Cartesian definition has had its defenders [Yes, > that's right, definitions have to be defended or criticized according to > their success in capturing what people mean when they talk about a > phenomenon, when that phenomenon resists facile description]. Rich Rosen > should grant that there are other definitions, or at least grant that > he doesn't really know. [MOODY] Yes, call me in the middle of the night! Send me letterbombs! Gorillagrams! Use carrier pigeons to leave messages all over the hood of my car! :-) I have this vision of philosophers meeting to defend their definition of unicorn as being just a horse, in some secret conclave in Bulgaria... The fact remains that every definition of what free will is, either seen and listed by me, or coming from others on this net, has been rooted in EXACTLY what I have been talking about. Some have simply reasserted a "new" definition (because they didn't like the "old" one?), some have simply asserted that free will as defined does exist without naming a mechanism (just assuming that one exists, sometimes because they have a specific conclusion in mind, like "responsibility"). >>Oh, great, so now a person's internal state, which comes from the wide variety >>of things many of which are beyond his/her control, if it leads them to >>do "wrong", makes them a sinner! > Exactly what does "control" mean here? Conscious control over the process of decision making, the ability to CHOOSE a choice. To be able to do so FREELY, to be able to choose, say, between "right" and "wrong" regardless of how your past experiences have made you what you are today, would be "free will". To insist that people have such "free will" just because one wants that "accountability" factor doesn't make it so. -- "Meanwhile, I was still thinking..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr