oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) (07/22/85)
A new book in the issue of free will is available, from one of my favorite authors: Daniel Dennett, ELBOW ROOM forms of free will worth wanting Basic Books As you may know Dr. Dennett from his previous book, BRAINSTORMS, he is very lucid, somewhat unconventional, and usually provides a hell of a lot to think about, rather than merrily strolling on the same green pastures many a philosophers sat idly before. Obviously, writing on one of the most oldest issues of philosophy takes a lot, and he (in my opinion) has eveything necessary to tackle this issue. The book is very well written, and I recommend it highly. -- Oz [all wizardesque side effects are totaly unintentional, unless stated otherwise..] Usenet: [decvax | allegra | linus | ihnp4] !utzoo!yetti!oz Bitnet: oz@ [yuleo | yuyetti] ------------- Support GNU. Consider the 3-muskateers' motto: ONE FOR ALL - ALL FOR ONE
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/05/85)
> A new book in the issue of free will is available, from > one of my favorite authors: > > Daniel Dennett, ELBOW ROOM > forms of free will worth wanting > Basic Books The title alone says it all. I hope you all get to read MY new book, "You Don't Know Your Ass From Your Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns Worth Wanting". I go into detail to show how just because the word 'unicorn' doesn't refer to any real object, that doesn't mean we can't redefine the word to mean something else, and magically get unicorns to exist. -- "No, wait, there's more!! Order now and get this free will!!!" Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/06/85)
In article <> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: >> >> Daniel Dennett, ELBOW ROOM >> forms of free will worth wanting >> Basic Books > >The title alone says it all. I hope you all get to read MY new book, >"You Don't Know Your Ass From Your Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns > Worth Wanting". I go into detail to show how just because the word >'unicorn' doesn't refer to any real object, that doesn't mean we can't >redefine the word to mean something else, and magically get unicorns to >exist. Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of reading at least the first and last chapters of Dennett's book, which address precisely the objections that Rich is making and go a hundred miles beyond him, Rich decides he knows all he needs to know from the book's title. I'm not sure at this point why anyone continues this "debate" with Rosen. Do you remember in your undergraduate philosophy courses, how there was always one guy who monopolized the discussions with his ill-founded objections to everything the professor and the readings said? "Aristotle must have been a dope, because obviously blah blah blah...." R. Carnes
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/06/85)
> Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of reading > at least the first and last chapters of Dennett's book, which address > precisely the objections that Rich is making and go a hundred miles > beyond him, Rich decides he knows all he needs to know from the > book's title. I'm not sure at this point why anyone continues this > "debate" with Rosen. [CARNES] Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of describing what he learned from this brilliant book's first and last chapters, Carnes decides al he has to do is point me to them. I wonder whether some people who spend their time pointing people to books have actually learned anything from them that they have actually integrated into their knowledge base and can use in discussion. Sometimes I thnk such people look for books like this that they hear will support their point of view, browse through them, understanding little, then reaching the part where the author says "Thus, what you believed originally when you picked up this book is actually true", saying "Aha! I was right!", but not quite knowing why enough to explain what they had learned. Instead, they point people to the book that was "so convincing". If Carnes had learned anything discussable from the book, I'm sure we'd all have heard it. > Do you remember in your undergraduate philosophy courses, how there > was always one guy who monopolized the discussions with his > ill-founded objections to everything the professor and the readings > said? "Aristotle must have been a dope, because obviously blah blah > blah...." Do you remember in your favorite newsgroup or other, how there was always one guy who spent a lot of time quoting other people's works at length and saying "See?" without any apparent understanding of the text? That man's name was Ken Arndt. It still is. Frankly, I'd rather hear the students raising their "ill founded objections to everything the professor and the readings said" than just hear the professor babbling on to a herd of nodding sheep. ("An unorthodox opinion? Get out of my classroom! ... What? A disagreement? You go with him!") -- "Wait a minute. '*WE*' decided??? *MY* best interests????" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/07/85)
Rosen writes: > I hope you all get to read MY new book, >"You Don't Know Your Ass From Your Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns > Worth Wanting". After you've finished that one, here's another book I would like to see from you: PHILOSOPHY MADE SIMPLE, by Richard Rosen. Synopsis: No longer will you have to spend long hours studying boring books or spend years at an expensive university in order to understand philosophy. Just follow these quick 'n easy steps, and soon your friends will be listening to you with new respect: 1. Select a concept that has been much discussed in the philosophical tradition. 2. Look up this term in a dictionary. Select one definition. 3. With all the pig-headed intransigence you can command, defend this definition against all comers as The One True Definition of the concept. If necessary, claim that the definition was established by a committee of philosophers in the dim and distant past, and this definition has been preserved down through the ages in dictionaries. 4. Refuse to be sidetracked by any points anyone else makes about epistemology, ontology, logic, the nature of definitions, etc. These people are only trying to confuse you, and you are inviting disaster if you once swerve from tireless repetition of The Definition. If it occurs to you that definitions are made up of other concepts, and if in moments of weakness you doubt that all concepts are fixed in self-identity for all eternity from the Big Bang to the Final Whimper, resolutely dismiss these thoughts from your mind. 5. Clog any seminars in which you participate (such as net.philosophy) with 500 lines/day of change-ringing on the same themes, so that everyone's n-finger will be worn down to a nub and everyone will be ready to give up on net.philosophy as a forum for enjoyable and enlightening discussion. Let me know when the book becomes available. R. Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/08/85)
Excuse me, Mr. Carnes, but didn't you already post an obnoxious reply to this article of mine you refer to? Why do it twice? All you had to say the last time was that you preferred to sit like a sheep in a philosophy class listening and nodding to the teacher rather than hearing some truly awful disgusting person like me ask some questions and make some points contrary (HORRORS!!!) to what was being said. I'm sure even the teacher of such a class would prefer such an awful disgusting person, asking questions, to a roomful of sheep. >> I hope you all get to read MY new book, "You Don't Know Your Ass From Your >> Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns Worth Wanting". > After you've finished that one, here's another book I would like to > see from you: PHILOSOPHY MADE SIMPLE, by Richard Rosen. I don't remember writing this book, sorry. > Synopsis: > No longer will you have to spend long hours studying boring books or > spend years at an expensive university in order to understand > philosophy. Which is of course the ONLY way one "should" learn philosophy... > Just follow these quick 'n easy steps, and soon your > friends will be listening to you with new respect: .. and your adversaries will be talking about you in obnoxious ways like this: > 1. Select a concept that has been much discussed in the > philosophical tradition. > 2. Look up this term in a dictionary. Select one definition. Especially the one that's commonly used and understood, rather than stringing together four sets of secondary definitions to stretch the limits of a point to infinity. > 3. With all the pig-headed intransigence you can command, defend > this definition against all comers as The One True Definition of the > concept. Imagine that, defending the way a word is commonly used from people who would twist its meaning to their own ends. Freedom is slavery? War is peace? Ignorance is strength? Peacekeeper missiles? How pigheaded and intransigent of us not to accept these new modern definitions, choosing to defend the understood meanings of the words instead. DISSSSSSgusting! > If necessary, claim that the definition was established by a > committee of philosophers in the dim and distant past, and this > definition has been preserved down through the ages in dictionaries. Good thing that hasn't been necessary, which may be why I never bothered to do it. If I claimed anything, it was that words have had the aforementioned definitions for a very long time and have been held by a very large number of people. That doesn't make their inner concepts "right", it merely means that that is the word to be used IF you intend to communicate your feelings and thoughts to another person about that thing. Unless you intend to provide your own dictionary in conjunction with any written thoughts you might have, a Carnesian-English dictionary (free will: not the concept as used for thousands of years, but an incredible simulation... :-) > 4. Refuse to be sidetracked by any points anyone else makes about > epistemology, ontology, logic, the nature of definitions, etc. These > people are only trying to confuse you, and you are inviting disaster > if you once swerve from tireless repetition of The Definition. If it > occurs to you that definitions are made up of other concepts, and if > in moments of weakness you doubt that all concepts are fixed in > self-identity for all eternity from the Big Bang to the Final > Whimper, resolutely dismiss these thoughts from your mind. It is precisely because definitions ARE made up of other concepts (the definitions of which seem to get ignored in the flurry of noise) that one must examine them so carefully to make sure the whole concept hasn't been actually obscured. Good point, don't be "sidetracked" by such points, answer them directly and to the point. As I have done repeatedly. For the n-th time, if people can make up their own definitions of words at whim, then frog shoemaker dangle what from sending the honeycomb Fred George toadflax runny isn't cheese plumage. Mr. Carnes has never been able to respond to this point. I wonder why. > 5. Clog any seminars in which you participate (such as > net.philosophy) with 500 lines/day of change-ringing on the same > themes, so that everyone's n-finger will be worn down to a nub and > everyone will be ready to give up on net.philosophy as a forum for > enjoyable and enlightening discussion. How awful. What I should have done is to clear any postings *with* Mr. Carnes before wasting everyone's time, him being an unbiased and nearly perfect arbiter of such things, as evidenced here. This as opposed to sending multiple replies to the same article just to show how really intensely you feel about certain people. > Let me know when the book becomes available. It's not exactly a book, it's a chapter in a book called "Intimidating and Insulting Net Contributors Through Outlandish Fabrication and Exaggeration" by a Mr. Crane, or something like that... Whooping Crane?? -- "Wait a minute. '*WE*' decided??? *MY* best interests????" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) (08/08/85)
In article <1420@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: >> Daniel Dennett, ELBOW ROOM >> forms of free will worth wanting >> >> Basic Books > >The title alone says it all. I hope you all get to read MY new book, >"You Don't Know Your Ass From Your Unicorn: The Varieties of Unicorns > Worth Wanting". I go into detail to show how just because the word >'unicorn' doesn't refer to any real object, that doesn't mean we can't >redefine the word to mean something else, and magically get unicorns to exist. > I was under the delusion that "critical thinking" involved the perception and analysis of contradictory arguments, and theories before reaching conclusions. Mr. Rosen awakened me !! Critical Thinking must obviously mean sticking as tighly as possible onto one's biases, prejudices, misconceptions, ignorance etc. Mr. Rosen is so locked into "his" way of seeing things, he is unable to look around, even for intellectial stimulation. Sigh !! This is just as dangerous as any other form of mental close-off you care to name.. (Racism ?? Religious fanaticism ?? .... fill in the blanks ....) The above recommended book could be too much for Rich to handle. For starters, he should read "The history of Philosophy" by Will Durant. Perhaps some reading activity could stifle his extraordinary outpour of verbosity, static, and rhetoric. [I could even save some disk space along the way :-)] Oz -- __ O Usenet: [decvax|allegra|linus|ihnp4]!utzoo!yetti!oz / /\___ Bitnet: oz@[yuleo|yuyetti] . ------------------------- / \ Support GNU. Consider the 3-musketeers' motto: / --+ ONE FOR ALL - ALL FOR ONE /
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/08/85)
Rich, (no sarcasm now) you're clearly an intelligent guy who can make
valuable contributions, and I tend to agree with you more often than
not. But I don't think you realize what a pain in the ass you can
be.
The free will problem goes to the heart of some basic human concerns
and cannot be settled for all time merely by drawing an parallel
between free will and unicorns. This analogy, to which you
persistently appeal, has been challenged in this newsgroup (notably
by Todd Moody, by implication). Your point is also addressed, and in
my opinion demolished, by Dennett in *Elbow Room*. That's at least
part of the reason why he subtitled his book *The Varieties of Free
Will Worth Wanting.* Hence my annoyance with your flip dismissal of
the book. (*Elbow Room*, BTW, is about the nature of philosophy as
much as it is about the free will question.)
Dennett writes (p. 49):
I take it that we already have an abundance of reasons
for believing both that we are physical entities and that
we are rational. So we need to understand *how* it might
be so, and how it might have come about....We have hardly
begun to see how much of what we want to be true about
ourselves can be illuminated -- not threatened -- by an
application of the scientific, naturalistic vision.
And he adds, in a footnote:
Nozick [in *Philosophical Explanations*] urges philosophers
to consider abandoning formal proof in favor of a particular
sort of philosophical explanation, in which we bring ourselves
to see how something we want to believe in could be possible.
This is excellent advice, in my opinion, and I take my project
in this chapter (and indeed in the entire book) to be an
exercise in Nozick's brand of explanation.
Before you respond to these quotes, Rich, make sure you understand
exactly what Dennett and Nozick are talking about. I can't find any
evidence in your postings so far that you have read even the first
chapter ("Please Don't Feed the Bugbears") of *Elbow Room*. Please
give us some incontrovertible evidence that you have.
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
"No one has ever announced that because determinism is true
thermostats do not control temperature." -- R. Nozick, *P.E.*, p. 315.aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (08/10/85)
> Instead of describing what he learned from this brilliant book's first and > last chapters, Carnes decides al he has to do is point me to them. [ROSEN] Consider that a) the book is no doubt copyrighted, b) it would take a lot of time to type stuff from it into the net -- time which you inexplicably seem to have in huge abundance, but which others may not have, c) a mind which was truly inquiring (and free) would seek out such books rather than spend all its time and energy defending its own position. -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h!aeq .signature temporarily out of service
jim@ISM780B.UUCP (08/11/85)
I suggest that those who have a strong feeling that RLR is unduly monopolizing this medium and is responding in an philosophically unsophisticated and ego-ridden way engage in an experiment: refuse to respond to postings of his that have these qualities. This might allow for an interesting and readable subset of all postings. Of course, all such action is voluntary; its implementation is very much along the lines of his views of a relative, personal, maximizing morality (BTW I share his view of the relativism of morality (I consider "absolute" morality to merely be the attempt by moralists to coerce others into a morality that they themselves may or may not hold), although I think that a more sophisticated discussion of the evolutionary and sociological aspects of the acquistion of morality, i.e., morality as acquired rather than chosen (feeds back into FW or the lack of it) would be more interesting and enlightening). The point is, it is much too easy to fall into the trap of counter-productive arguing with Rich or anyone else who insists on shouting their POV loudly and incessantly; this group needs to find ways to carry on conversations even in the presence of such "noise". -- Jim Balter (ima!jim)
gabor@qantel.UUCP (Gabor Fencsik@ex2642) (08/13/85)
Dennett quoting Nozick, courtesy of Rich Carnes: > Nozick [in *Philosophical Explanations*] urges philosophers > to consider abandoning formal proof in favor of a particular > sort of philosophical explanation, in which we bring ourselves > to see how something we want to believe in could be possible. > This is excellent advice, in my opinion, and I take my project > in this chapter (and indeed in the entire book) to be an > exercise in Nozick's brand of explanation. Of course Rich Rosen will reply that this is religion, not science: you start from the desired conclusion and retrofit your definitions and arguments. [How do I know what Rich Rosen's reply will be, you ask? I derived it from Rich's chemical makeup, an easy exercise left to the reader. Hint: use the Scientific Method.] I sometimes wonder if Rich Rosen has ever observed actual live scientists at work. The linear progression from definitions to theorems is characteristic of the EXPOSITION of scientific results. It is a stylistic convention for scientific publications. It is emphatically not the way scientists go about discovering things. Scientists formulate hypotheses, attempt to prove them, fail, adjust their definitions and hypotheses and try again ad infinitum. Science is a teleological activity. There are always things you wish you could prove but cannot, just yet. So it is with philosophy. We have a lot riding on the concept of autonomous human choice (I'll avoid the dreaded notion of 'free will'). Our concepts of guilt, innocence, morality, conscience and human purpose are among the most obvious examples. The existence of autonomous human choice is a working hypothesis in which we have invested a great deal. The evidence for it may look shaky to Rich Rosen but that does not make it into an article of faith. Maybe a more constructive direction for Rich would be to tell us where the concepts of guilt, innocence, morality, conscience, etc. come from in a universe where autonomous human choice does not exist. Come to think of it, where does the notion of 'inalienable rights' come from? How come Rich has inalienable rights and his toaster doesn't? ----- Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,nsc,hplabs,intelca}!qantel!gabor
ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (08/13/85)
>> Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of reading >> at least the first and last chapters of Dennett's book, which address >> precisely the objections that Rich is making and go a hundred miles >> beyond him, Rich decides he knows all he needs to know from the >> book's title. I'm not sure at this point why anyone continues this >> "debate" with Rosen. [CARNES] > >Could any response be more revealing than this? Instead of describing >what he learned from this brilliant book's first and last chapters, >Carnes decides al he has to do is point me to them. I wonder whether >some people who spend their time pointing people to books have actually >learned anything from them that they have actually integrated into >their knowledge base and can use in discussion. Sometimes I thnk such >people look for books like this that they hear will support their point >of view... [RICH ROSEN] I think you have missed Mr. Carnes' point, Rich. You evidently view `free will' as an entity whose `existence' would favor certain religious points of view, and as most definitely threatening to your preconceptions about the `real' causal nature everything. Consequently, you have publically dismissed the entire book `propaganda' of the enemy, who must obviously be `wishful thinkers'. "Look at the title", you say, `Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting', "See, they are wishful thinkers!". And with that perceptive analysis, you conclude that there is nothing worthwhile in the book. Dennett's viewpoint strikes me as more in line with recent attempts in AI and CogSci to model internal mental phenomena with computers than as a desperate religious justification for souls. I cannot see why someone with your causal reductionist approach should find anything offensive in its pages. In fact, to the extent that his arguments successfully capture the essence of what some of us call `free will', Dennett validates the causal worldview to which you cling. As further indication of the book's `political correctness', I'd like to mention that Dennett does not validate any of my `pet theories'. He avoids traditional metaphysics, souls, religion, and other holistic excesses. He poo-poos the relevancy of quantum indeterminacy to the free will question: "Question: in the actual world of hardware computers, does it make "any difference whether the computer uses a genuinely random sequence "or a pseudo-random sequence? That is, if one wrote Rabin's program "to run on a computer that didn't have a radium randomizer but relied "instead on a pseudo-random number generating algorithm, would this "cheap shortcut work? ... The most obvious contribution of QM to the free will debate is to banish to oblivion the question: How can Free Will be meaningful in a fully deterministic world? Having disposed of this question, Dennett goes on to argue that even in a deterministic world (based on classical causal concepts) one can investigate deeper aspects of the free will issue. In spite of my dissatisfaction with many of Dennett's arguments, I still highly recommend his book to anyone who has a strong opinion this topic, or a genuine interest in philosophy. ======================================================================== Consider your overwhelming presence in this newsgroup, Rich. Of the last 154 articles we received in net.philosophy, the top 16 contributors break down as below: rlr@pyuxd 48 mangoe@umcp-cs 18 ellis@spar 13 williams@kirk 11 flink@umcp-cs 8 tmoody@sjuvax 6 daemon@mit-herm 6 carnes@gargoyle 5 tdh@frog 4 franka@mmintl 4 aeq@pucc-h 4 rap@oliven 3 padraig@utastro 3 beth@sphinx 3 mrh@cybvax0 2 bjanz@watarts 2 Your interest is commendable. But the enormous volume you have contributed to the free will debate, in which you persistently present identical arguments without demonstrating any understanding of the points raised by others, discredits the causes of `rigorous analysis' and `objective scientific evidence' which you so ardently wish to justify. If you will not read current ideas that have aroused the interest of others who are interested in philosophy, if you refuse to temporarily drop your frozen preconceptions about `the real world' for purposes of understanding the philosophical points of other people, why keep the pretense of interest in philosophical discourse? Net.flame is an excellent public depository for those who must `overwhelm' their `adversaries' with astonishing keyboard virtuosity and rigid adherence to dogma. -michael
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/14/85)
>> Instead of describing what he learned from this brilliant book's first and >> last chapters, Carnes decides al he has to do is point me to them. [ROSEN] > Consider that a) the book is no doubt copyrighted, b) it would take a lot of > time to type stuff from it into the net -- time which you inexplicably seem > to have in huge abundance, but which others may not have, c) a mind which was > truly inquiring (and free) would seek out such books rather than spend all its > time and energy defending its own position. [SARGENT] Note that I did not ask for quotes from the book. On the contrary, I asked for just the opposite! I wanted to hear precisely what the recommender learned from the book, in his own words, NOT the final conclusion as quoted from the book, but the reasoning (as understood [??] by the reader) that got us there. If that is not present, or available, I fear the judgment would be against such a recommendation. And I certainly don't expect you, Jeff Sargent, to understand, based on what I have seen of how you choose beliefs, apparently seeing no need for substantiation of the reasoning leading to a conclusion. Given the large number of available books in the world, one must use such substantiation as a valid means of filtering out (at least as a start) the worthwhile from the worthless. -- "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting." - e. e. cummings Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/14/85)
> I was under the delusion that "critical thinking" involved > the perception and analysis of contradictory arguments, and > theories before reaching conclusions. Mr. Rosen awakened me !! It looks like you're stil quite asleep from the sarcastic attack here. > Critical Thinking must obviously mean sticking as tighly as > possible onto one's biases, prejudices, misconceptions, > ignorance etc. Unless evidence presents itself to demolish such established knowns that you refer to as prejudices/biases/etc. Given that the author of the article didn't offer any such evidence, instead presenting an argument that was easily debunked, one has a right to question the substance of the book he was referring to. If he learned so much from it, why couldn't he explain what he learned instead of just reproducing sections of the conclusions and saying "See? He agrees with me?" > Mr. Rosen is so locked into "his" way of seeing things, he is > unable to look around, even for intellectial stimulation. > Sigh !! This is just as dangerous as any other form of > mental close-off you care to name.. (Racism ?? Religious fanaticism ?? > .... fill in the blanks ....) It's amazing how those who seem to want the universe to be certain ways (filled with free will and other odds and ends) refer to those who refuse to accept their wishful thinking (and that's all it is, as shown by the [lack of] evidence) by names like "locked", "biased", "prejudiced", etc. It makes me chuckle. > The above recommended book could be too much for Rich to handle. Or maybe it was too much for Mr. Carnes to handle, which is why I have yet to see any substantive summary of the position held in the book that would lead me to think that Dennett had something to say on the topic that was more interesting than what Carnes excerpted, which was rather easily tossed. If there are other ideas leading to that conclusion, what were they? Why didn't Carnes mention or discuss them? I'm not belittling Richard Carnes at all when I say this, and I hope he realizes that. It seems a lot of people read some books, see a certain conclusion they like, and "recommend" the book without actually having understood it. A good name for that might be "acritical thinking". -- "Do I just cut 'em up like regular chickens?" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/14/85)
> I suggest that those who have a strong feeling that RLR is unduly > monopolizing this medium and is responding in an philosophically > unsophisticated and ego-ridden way engage in an experiment: > refuse to respond to postings of his that have these qualities. [BALTER] I suggest that those of you who have a strong feeling that I am monopolizing thsi medium recognize the fact that if I get twenty responses to an article of mine, all giving obscure variations of the same theme (how dare you not listen to this author? how dare you deny the existence of free will? how dare you not believe my subjective experience as being real?) I am likely to respond to a number of them, sometimes saying the same thing (especially when they are received eons apart), and even more especially when they consist of ad hominem noisemaking. Like... Which makes me wonder why all the free will junkies suddenly came out of the closet so loudly and all at once in hopes of doing a "this will show that Rich Rosen that free will exists" number. -- Meanwhile, the Germans were engaging in their heavy cream experiments in Finland, where the results kept coming out like Swiss cheese... Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (08/15/85)
From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) > .... I wanted to hear precisely what the recommender learned > from the book, in his own words, NOT the final conclusion as quoted from > the book, but the reasoning (as understood [??] by the reader) that got us > there. If that is not present, or available, I fear the judgment would be > against such a recommendation. And I certainly don't expect you, Jeff > Sargent, to understand, based on what I have seen of how you choose beliefs, > apparently seeing no need for substantiation of the reasoning leading to a > conclusion. Given the large number of available books in the world, one must > use such substantiation as a valid means of filtering out (at least as a > start) the worthwhile from the worthless. Rich, it's odd to see you descending to ad hominem attacks when you have so often flamed against them. And haven't you ever noticed that there are two ways of acquiring knowledge or ideas? One of them is the one you like, i.e. either empirically verifying something or starting from known facts and reasoning to a conclusion. But it is also possible for something to *occur* to someone without going through all this process without what that which occurs to the person being incompatible with reason -- just not reached by reason. It saddens me to see you limit yourself to only a fraction of the good and the knowledge you could have! "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." It is only your position of faith that laboratory substantiation is utterly required for something to be true or worthwhile. As I've said before, I also believe in substantiation in the "laboratory of life" -- i.e. try something, and if it works -- if it does what it's claimed to do -- stay with it. A relationship with Christ does what it's claimed to do: transform a person in the direction of being like Christ; not necessarily quickly or easily, but none the less truly. -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h!aeq Faith is admitting that you ain't God.
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/16/85)
>>.... I wanted to hear precisely what the recommender learned >>from the book, in his own words, NOT the final conclusion as quoted from >>the book, but the reasoning (as understood [??] by the reader) that got us >>there. If that is not present, or available, I fear the judgment would be >>against such a recommendation. And I certainly don't expect you, Jeff >>Sargent, to understand, based on what I have seen of how you choose beliefs, >>apparently seeing no need for substantiation of the reasoning leading to a >>conclusion. Given the large number of available books in the world, one must >>use such substantiation as a valid means of filtering out (at least as a >>start) the worthwhile from the worthless. > Rich, it's odd to see you descending to ad hominem attacks when you have so > often flamed against them. And haven't you ever noticed that there are two > ways of acquiring knowledge or ideas? One of them is the one you like, i.e. > either empirically verifying something or starting from known facts and > reasoning to a conclusion. But it is also possible for something to *occur* > to someone without going through all this process without what that which > occurs to the person being incompatible with reason -- just not reached by > reason. Yes, a religious experience. There was no ad hominem attack, merely a statement of fact about what you've been saying about rigorous analysis (remember "rigor mortis"?) for years. And relevant to your statements, too. If Carnes had a religious experience reading Daniel Dennett, fine. I doubt that such enlightenment came in that manner. Why do you so vigorously deny my analysis above? I've seen it happen all too many times, where people readily quote some author whom they agree with without having actually understood what was said, merely because they liked the conclusion. -- "Meanwhile, I was still thinking..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/17/85)
> I think you have missed Mr. Carnes' point, Rich. > > You evidently view `free will' as an entity whose `existence' would > favor certain religious points of view, and as most definitely > threatening to your preconceptions about the `real' causal nature > everything. Consequently, you have publically dismissed the entire > book `propaganda' of the enemy, who must obviously be `wishful thinkers'. I "evidently view" it that way because that's the definition of the term. Imagine that. "Threatening"? You'd have to have evidence to make it seem threatening, and none has been presented, thus no need to feel threatened. Since the term does imply certain religious points of view as it stands, perhaps there is SOME OTHER phenomenon (maybe REA, maybe something else) which DOES happen and thus should have ANOTHER NAME from the thing we were originally discussing. > "Look at the title", you say, `Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting', > "See, they are wishful thinkers!". And with that perceptive analysis, > you conclude that there is nothing worthwhile in the book. Well, titles are generally hooks for the book itself, and if a title doesn't convey what is inside, it probably isn't a good title. Nonetheless, the sections Carnes quoted (rather than speaking his own mind) show very hole-filled thinking. If it was taken completely out of context (after a section in which he proves that it was OK to do that after all), wouldn't THAT other section have been a good section to reproduce? Why wasn't it? More importantly, why didn't Carnes just explain what he learned from it? > As further indication of the book's `political correctness', I'd like to > mention that Dennett does not validate any of my `pet theories'. He > avoids traditional metaphysics, souls, religion, and other holistic > excesses. He poo-poos the relevancy of quantum indeterminacy to > the free will question: > > "Question: in the actual world of hardware computers, does it make > "any difference whether the computer uses a genuinely random sequence > "or a pseudo-random sequence? That is, if one wrote Rabin's program > "to run on a computer that didn't have a radium randomizer but relied > "instead on a pseudo-random number generating algorithm, would this > "cheap shortcut work? ... Thank you. Now that's a good extract, and well introduced too. > The most obvious contribution of QM to the free will debate is to banish > to oblivion the question: > > How can Free Will be meaningful in a fully deterministic world? So, chuck the word deterministic and ask "How can free will be meaningful even in a quantum world?" > Having disposed of this question, Dennett goes on to argue that even in > a deterministic world (based on classical causal concepts) one can > investigate deeper aspects of the free will issue. > > In spite of my dissatisfaction with many of Dennett's arguments, I still > highly recommend his book to anyone who has a strong opinion this topic, > or a genuine interest in philosophy. I never said it wasn't on my list. Carnes, though, succeeded in pushing it down on the list because he "confirmed" my suspicions about it through his choice of extracts. I already mentioned that I've read some Dennett (including an interview in Johnathan Miller's "States of Mind") and am not unfamiliar with what he espouses. > Consider your overwhelming presence in this newsgroup, Rich. Of the > last 154 articles we received in net.philosophy, the top 16 contributors > break down as below: > > rlr@pyuxd 48 mangoe@umcp-cs 18 > ellis@spar 13 williams@kirk 11 > flink@umcp-cs 8 tmoody@sjuvax 6 > daemon@mit-herm 6 carnes@gargoyle 5 > tdh@frog 4 franka@mmintl 4 > aeq@pucc-h 4 rap@oliven 3 > padraig@utastro 3 beth@sphinx 3 > mrh@cybvax0 2 bjanz@watarts 2 > > Your interest is commendable. Am I to be burned at the stake for being able to write quickly on my seat? > But the enormous volume you have contributed to the free will debate, in > which you persistently present identical arguments without demonstrating > any understanding of the points raised by others, discredits the causes > of `rigorous analysis' and `objective scientific evidence' which you > so ardently wish to justify. Do I "not demonstrate understanding", or do I keep debunking the same point over and over because it's reiterated over and over? In an effort to "show Rosen the truth about free will"? (That's the tone of more than half of the rebuttals.) > If you will not read current ideas that have aroused the interest of > others who are interested in philosophy, if you refuse to temporarily > drop your frozen preconceptions about `the real world' for purposes of > understanding the philosophical points of other people, why keep the > pretense of interest in philosophical discourse? Net.flame is an > excellent public depository for those who must `overwhelm' their > `adversaries' with astonishing keyboard virtuosity and rigid adherence > to dogma. If you won't listen to me, why pretend your interested in the real truth? Did that sound crass? That's actually a much shorter version of your paragraph above. I apologize deeply if I find holes in other models while their proponents do not successfully find holes of substance in mine. (What's a "hole of substance"?) -- "iY AHORA, INFORMACION INTERESANTE ACERCA DE... LA LLAMA!" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (08/18/85)
> I've seen it happen all too many times, where people > readily quote some author whom they agree with without having actually > understood what was said, merely because they liked the conclusion. > -- > Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr > But Carnes, at least subsequently, did give an account of the book -- its arguments, not just conclusions. If you remain suspicious, because he seemed to agree with Dennett, then heed the angle Michael Ellis has mentioned, which I will echo here. Basically I don't like Dennett's conclusions, and studied the book in the spirit of trying to dispute him at every step. That's hard to do, because he's a powerful reasoner and (part of the time) a damn good writer. But I ended up grudgingly granting him more than I wanted to. So, we are not endorsing this book because it makes us oh so comfy by telling us just what we want to hear -- but because it presents an interesting perspective and several powerful chains of argument. It may well take a place as a major modern statement on the question. And Dennett is by no means a softie on free will. Don't be misled by the subtitle: the varieties of free will worth wanting, per Dennett, are carefully constrained on all sides. If all you're interested in is a yes/no answer, then you might as well blast Dennett without reading the book, bacause ultimately he more or less accepts something which is more or less some form of free will. But if you're interested in more than a friends/enemies list, you ought to dig into the details and discover that Dennett is much closer to your position than you think. Oddly (it's odd by my lights, anyway), he also more or less accepts something more or less like causal determinism. What? How can that be? Free will and determinism are incompatible! Well Dennett argues that they're not. (If you care for labels, that makes him a ``compatibilist''.) The loophole that allows this is that the varieties of free will worth wanting are not the "I am captain of my fate, master of my soul" kinds but more modest kinds. All of this needs to be hedged with the comment that I'm doing some interpreting and extrapolating to reach what I take to be Dennett's stands. He rarely announces them pointblank, more often argues under one hypothesis for a while and another for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if other readers challenge my statement that he accepts determinism; perhaps he actually allows micro-indeterminism. The point, for Dennett, is that that decision doesn't finally matter too much; in either case, those of us who clamor for free will shouldn't be distressed. (He collapses these two positions via a group of arguments including the one cited by Michael Ellis, about an advanced AI system which might have either a radioactive sample somewhere to produce real quantum randomness or else a precomputed list of pseudo-random numbers.) Regards, Mitch Marks P.S. You might find the "Control and Self-Control" chapter of interest for the parallel debate going on in net.singles. -- -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (08/20/85)
>> I've seen it happen all too many times, where people >>readily quote some author whom they agree with without having actually >>understood what was said, merely because they liked the conclusion. >> Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr > But Carnes, at least subsequently, did give an account of the book -- > its arguments, not just conclusions. Just excerpts. And excerpts containing conclusions for which I found flaws in the reasoning leading up to them. > If you remain suspicious, because > he seemed to agree with Dennett, then heed the angle Michael Ellis has > mentioned, which I will echo here. Basically I don't like Dennett's > conclusions, and studied the book in the spirit of trying to dispute him > at every step. That's hard to do, because he's a powerful reasoner and > (part of the time) a damn good writer. But I ended up grudgingly granting > him more than I wanted to. > So, we are not endorsing this book because it makes us oh so comfy > by telling us just what we want to hear -- but because it presents an > interesting perspective and several powerful chains of argument. It may > well take a place as a major modern statement on the question. > And Dennett is by no means a softie on free will. Don't be misled > by the subtitle: the varieties of free will worth wanting, per Dennett, > are carefully constrained on all sides. If all you're interested in is > a yes/no answer, then you might as well blast Dennett without reading the > book, bacause ultimately he more or less accepts something which is more > or less some form of free will. But if you're interested in more than a > friends/enemies list, you ought to dig into the details and discover that > Dennett is much closer to your position than you think. Oddly (it's > odd by my lights, anyway), he also more or less accepts something more > or less like causal determinism. I'm passingly familiar with some of Dennett's other work. The point is that in the long run he makes the same fallacy that people in this newsgroup insist upon making: the Humpty Dumpty position that says "I can take this word and redefine it to mean this and no one will be any the wiser". You can't get away with that in this life. > What? How can that be? Free will and determinism are incompatible! > Well Dennett argues that they're not. (If you care for labels, that makes > him a ``compatibilist''.) The loophole that allows this is that the varieties > of free will worth wanting are not the "I am captain of my fate, master of > my soul" kinds but more modest kinds. Which in fact do not qualify as "free will" by the definition, but apply more to things that Torek and I and others have talked about AND agreed about regarding their existence. None of this means I don't admire the man (I've found what you say about him is true) as a writer and thinker, nor that I don't intend (one of these days) to read both Brainstorms and Elbow Room, but I still found an apparent problem with his conclusion. If the readers of the book got so much out of it, then they should easily be able to say "No, Rich, what about this..." No one has stepped forward with a serious explanation of what I might have missed that THEY have learned from the book, and that says something. -- Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts. Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr